


Labyrinth: Kingdom Come

by Ellen_Weaver



Category: Labyrinth (1986)
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-19
Updated: 2014-03-20
Packaged: 2018-01-16 07:42:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 25
Words: 112,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1337500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ellen_Weaver/pseuds/Ellen_Weaver
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"King gone!" cried the littlest goblin. "What do you mean, 'King gone?" Sarah demanded. The Goblin King has abandoned his throne and disappeared into the Labyrinth. It's up to Sarah Williams to find him and bring him home. It will be a hard task: the way forward is sometimes the way back. And the Goblin King is tricky, and has plans of his own...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Act I: The Threshold

Sarah Williams liked puzzles; she solved them for a living.

Hollywood was a place of a million pieces that always needed putting together. There were so many beautiful people, beautiful pictures, beautiful ideas, but sometimes they wouldn't come together correctly. And when that was in danger of happening, and if people were very lucky, they called on Sarah Williams.

She had certain rules.

She didn't like visual effects. She considered them cheating. And the finished product never looked as good, as real as it needed to, if the actors were interacting with green screens instead of the real thing. You could waste all the money you wanted to on computer graphics, but if the actors couldn't see it, feel it, touch it, then it didn't matter. It looked fake; the dream would break, and the audience would know they'd been cheated. Anyway, not that it mattered at this point in her career; she wasn't operating at a level quite yet where there was much of any money to blow whether the director wanted to (always yes) or not. So Sarah would come in and look at the set and the script, and have four hours to find a solution to the puzzle. How does one create a car-crash scene without wrecking any cars? How does one shoot a piece of fight choreography without using trained stunt performers? Things like that.

Sometimes, when Sarah was working, the problems she solved were problems that no one else, other than the director, seemed to notice were problems. She had a knack for actors; not telling them their business or petting their ego, but she could go up to one after friendly introductions and tell them their story. Actors didn't have the advantage of seeing the whole film put together before they did their work; Sarah had a way of summing up the narrative for them, from their character's perspective, that reassured them about how to go about working the scene if they seemed stuck. Small problems, tiny things really. The details that mattered and couldn't be bought for any amount of money, that helped create one flawless picture the way fitting the last piece of a jigsaw did for a puzzle. And Sarah solved puzzles.

Like the one here. Long after she'd rather have been catching up on her sleep, Sarah was pacing inside a dark studio. This scene was supposed to be set in a ruinous medieval castle, and their production designer had done his job well, considering what he had to work with. But they needed a way to create the illusion of additional infinite space beyond, and a canvas painting wouldn't match up exactly, not with increased film speeds. It needed to look as real to the camera as the painted plaster stones. Sarah frowned as she looked around at the limited depth of field space. She threw the lights on and grabbed her camera. She'd go through the set, take high-def pictures of some of the curves and arches of the interior space, and have that fidelity-printed onto fabric.

All the things that could be done, and done well, and done quick and cheap—they weren't impossible puzzles to solve, but they were puzzles that most other people, even Hollywood magicians, didn't even realize were there to solve, or puzzles they didn't want to waste the mental energy to solve. Sarah Williams could do it, though. She'd had valuable experience in that area.

This set reminded her of the Labyrinth, something she hadn't really thought about in years. At least, not the whole of it. The people and the pieces, certainly. The last time she'd needed her friends was her junior year of college, when she had a case of the flu so terrible that she'd barely been able to totter from the bed to the toilet down the hall, much less eat. Hoggle had come, put her back in bed, fed her soup, kept her company. "You're a woman now," he said, touching her hand. "You won't be needing us much anymore. But we're still right here, Sarah." She'd been too weak to cry, but she was fiercely glad that he'd come. She realized now that it was a goodbye.

She sniffed and realized she was crying now. Stupid. Stupid. A small hand tapped her shoe and offered her a stained handkerchief. "Thank you," she said, wiping away the tears to get a better look. "Oh. It's you."

"Yes-Ma'am-Lady." A trio of goblins was standing by her feet, huddled close together. "You needed us."

"Well… no, I didn't." Sarah sighed and glanced up as a shadow passed overhead. The studio was crawling with goblins, now, hanging from the set, scurrying on the equipment, and in one disturbing case gnawing the duct tape on a rig. Had she said some right words? Was the Goblin King about to show himself to her after almost two decades? Impossible. "What are you doing here?"

"You needed us," insisted the little goblin, reaching back up for his handkerchief.

"No not needed us," said the taller one behind him, snippy-beaked with bronze horns. "Needed _by_ us."

"Yes-Ma'am-Lady. Needed."

"Oh?" She packed her camera back in her bag. "Why?" She had an ominous feeling with so many goblins around. Ominous, but exciting; something was about to happen.

The goblins shared a secret look before the taller goblin shoved his smaller companion. "King gone," the goblin said, twisting its hands together.

"What do you mean, 'King gone?" Sarah crossed her arms over her chest and gave the goblins a severe look. "Gone how long?"

"Long gone," the goblin replied with a shrug. "King left throne and go. King go. King gone." The other two goblins nodded in unison.

"Now wait a minute," Sarah said, clenching her fists. She looked at the second and third goblin in the representative trio. Ambassadors? Supplicants? "The Goblin King's gone?"

"Yes."

"And what, you didn't notice until just today?"

"We was busy!" insisted the third goblin. He had a forthright but stupid look to him. "We were gonna look for him, but we forgot. Then we forgot we forgot!"

Sarah took a deep breath. So the Goblin King had left his kingdom. She'd imagined telling the Goblin King off many times over the years, and for many things. For the promised dreams that popped like a soap-bubble when they landed in her hand; for trying to seduce her when she was barely more than a child, and for the Cleaners—yes, she'd created and memorized a tirade about attempted murder and was always adding new good bits to it—but of everything, this took the prize. The goblins needed to come to her for help? She'd have to add at least two pages to her speech. _"King gone"_ indeed!

Sarah felt heat rising to her cheeks. Speaking to goblins was like speaking to rather stupid people, frustrating and confusing. "Did he leave a note?"

"Yes-Ma'am-Lady!" The little goblin's face lit up, and Sarah breathed a sigh of relief. But then the little goblin sang a word, and all the other goblins one by one stopped what they were doing with the set and props and leftovers at the craft table, and layered their voices until the entire studio was filled with the song. The word was "I" and the note was in the key of longing pain.

The sound was tragic and unbearable. "Stop," Sarah shouted. They stopped, though the sound echoed off the walls before fading completely away.

Something sad twisted in her. When she'd come home, she'd said she needed all of them. And that had included the Goblin King. There were so many questions she had for him. There were so many things she needed to know. And when she'd gotten a little older, there were sexual longings she'd wanted him to satisfy but, instead had to be content with herself or with the clumsy, self-absorbed attentions of boys her age. He'd never come. He'd never cared. That was a secret speech that hurt so badly she never even tried to put it in words.

When she was confident her voice would not shake, she asked, "So where did he go?"

"He walked away," the taller goblin offered helpfully. "He put on best coat and go."

_Putting on clothes? Walking? The Goblin King on foot?_

"King somewhere in kingdom. King lost, but we don't know where. Are you King now instead?"

"Ladies is not Kings! Ladies is Queens, dummy!" The first goblin kicked the other.

"Stop that!" Sarah snapped, and felt bad when the goblins flinched. But they looked at her a moment from under hooded eyelids and smiled knowing smiles.

"You talk like King. We like you. Keep you instead?"

"No," said Sarah. "Definitely not. "

"We need King," cried the first goblin. "Need him!"

"I'm very sorry about that," Sarah said. _Sorry about the predicament it's put me in._ What should she say to them? Go home? I don't want to? Was that the sort of person she was? She rubbed the bridge of her nose. She looked at the goblins, looking at her with hope and sad longing. _No. I can do this. I miss the Labyrinth. I miss Hoggle and Sir Didymus and Ludo and everything else about that insane, wonderful place—even its missing king. This is what I was meant to do. This is a puzzle. And a true hero never turns down the call to adventure, or checks her calendar first._

She must have waited too long to decide, for the goblins started to pout, big lips sticking out and tears welling up in their eyes. "Stop looking at me that way." She snapped, "I'll come back with you. I'll even try to find the Goblin King for you, and bring him back. I don't promise it's possible, but I'll try."

Sarah rechecked the gear in her go bag. She'd learned that sometimes solving puzzles took all night and took her to strange locations, and was always prepared to spend a night in her car. She pulled her jacket on, flexed her feet in her rubber-soled clogs, and grabbed a few bottles of water from the craft table. Should I let someone know where I've gone? She paused, and then reconsidered. No. Screw that. Either I'll find the Goblin King and he'll re-order time, or not. Call to adventure, leap of faith, all that stuff. She paused and took out her camera, substituted it with a sixth and seventh bottle of water. She considered leaving her phone too, but didn't. There were likely no outlets in the Labyrinth, but she'd want her phone as a talisman against trouble. Maybe she'd even wear it around her neck, an amulet in black. She laughed to herself. "When do we go?" She slung her bag over her shoulder.

"Already here," the goblins insisted, as they moved through the empty set, pushing and pulling her along with them. She went through the blank place where she'd planned to put the photo, and the world tilted.

_Oh no,_ she had time to think. She grabbed a sandstone ledge as she felt the floor fall from under her feet. "Help!" she cried out to the goblins, but they cowered in fear in the archways of the familiar and disorienting room. It was the Escher stair room, just where she'd left, and gravity no longer worked the way it should. She clawed at the landing and managed to push one shoulder over the ledge; her feet couldn't find any purchase. The bag on her back was heavy…too heavy. Her hands wouldn't hold! She was going to fall!

 

_Each chapter will include a suggested soundtrack for ambiance and general shenanigans. Cue up or ignore at your whim BUT-the soundtrack will contain clues, themes, and foreshadowing for the story._

######  **Soundtrack for Chapter 1 ******

"Lady Grinning Soul" -David Bowie  
"Within You" -David Bowie  
"So Real" -Jeff Buckley

**Next... Chapter 2: "In the Halls of the Goblin King"**


	2. In the Halls of the Goblin King

 

"Help me!" she cried. "I'm going to fall!" The little cluster of goblin ambassadors stood stupidly in the doorway, too afraid to come closer. "Join hands and make a chain!" she shouted. "Right now!" Somewhere below her, terribly far below, she heard the crunching of plywood and plaster and the crash of lighting rigs. _Gravity, you are not a friend,_ she thought angrily, and kicked her legs, trying to swim in empty air. The goblins, linked arm-in-arm, slowly extended themselves out to her. They grabbed her hands. "Now pull!" she shouted. "Pull or it's the Bog for all of you! On three! One, two, THREE!"

For one horrid moment she thought she was going to go over the edge and take the entire crack-the-whip of goblin rescuers for an honor guard. But they pulled, and her belly scraped painfully over the stone, and she rolled over onto its solidness gratefully. Her heart raced. _This was living! What fun! What an idiot I am!_ She laughed and picked herself up. "Thank you," she said. "Where's the door out of here?"

"Two doors," said the goblin who'd grabbed her hands. "The door out, and the door in."

"Just the one that leads back to the castle," she said. And they ushered her out of the Escher maze and back into the castle proper.

"It's just like I remember," she murmured, looking around the throne room. Of course, she hadn't seen much, just a glimpse. But there was the throne, and the pit, and the ledges and holes and catwalks and tunnels and passages honeycombed all through the stones, and each opening occupied by a goblin, or sometimes a chicken. She glanced at the clock hanging over the throne, and blinked. The sweeping bronze arms had been broken off; it was dead time now. The oculi and murder-holes showed a starless night in the Underground. It stank, and the light from the torches and braziers was smoky and uncertain.

"Huh," she murmured.

"Sit here!" cackled her goblin entourage, pressing her toward the throne. "Up there! Be the Queen!"

"No," she said firmly, digging in her heels.

"Of course, of course," cried a goblin. "Crown her first!"

"Cut her hair!" A thousand clever cruel hands gripped her body and pulled her over to the throne. Hostile crowd-surfing, she thought. I hope they don't drop me. She tried to struggle free, but it wasn't much use. They held her fast. A goblin waited by the throne with a huge pair of scissors, brandishing them in a way that gave Sarah little confidence in his training or education.

"I can't be Queen!" she shouted. "You still have a King!"

"Yes-Ma'am-Lady," said the littlest goblin, "But King gone!"

They pushed her to the throne and pressed her head to the pillow there. _Jareth,_ she thought, _I will never forgive you this, because I think my cheek is resting right where your royal rump should be._ "Wait!" she yelled, as the goblin with the scissors opened the rusty blades. "I have an idea. The Goblin King told me—" she thought quickly. "He's got a substitute for when he's gone. He left you a chicken prince. There!" She pointed in a direction that she hoped led to a chicken. All the goblins turned to look, and made a dash for a scrawny black bantam. _Oh thank God,_ Sarah thought. "Get him!" she shouted, standing up and shoving the scissors away from her and kicking their holder for good measure. Carefully she wended through the throng, as the goblins, crowing with their prize, deposited a chicken on the cushion her head had so recently vacated. It flitted and tried to escape once or twice, but then ruffled its bedraggled tail and shat upon the seat. _Excellent,_ she thought.

"You," she said quietly to the littlest goblin who seemed determined to stick by her, "Show me to the King's chambers. Now."

"Yes-Ma'am-Lady," said the little goblin. "This way!" She followed the goblin as quickly and quietly as possible. There was only room for one strutting cock on that throne, Sarah fumed, and wouldn't she just love to put the right one back there as quickly as possible.

Up a second set of stairs and down a curving passage, the little goblin stopped before a simple door made all of iron. The little goblin—Yimmil, by name, when she'd asked—had kept a clear distance. There was one doorknob, in the shape of a crystal orb, set six feet off the ground. It turned easily under her hand. Behind her, she heard the raucous sounds of the goblins making much of their ersatz King. She'd need time to figure out what to do, and it seemed that the Goblin King's chambers—with their iron door—would be a good place to start, and be a safe place to collect herself.

Sarah wasn't sure what she had expected out of the Goblin King's bedroom—perhaps the vibrating opulence of a porn palace boudoir, or maybe the costume-belching disarray of an actor's dressing room—but it certainly wasn't this.

Inside was a garden, false and real. The false were trompe l'oil paintings on the plastered walls, showing coppiced art-nouveau trees bearing fruit against midnight-blue twilight. The stars in the sky of the midnight-blue ceiling were jewels. The grass on either side of the spiraling path was stitched and dagged silk. The stone wall to the other side was also a stuffed couch of gray velvet. There was a single golden perch in the center of the room, nine feet high, plain and unadorned, with an isinglass lantern finial in the shape of the crescent moon.

But oh, it smelled real. It felt real. She could feel the cool summer-evening breeze wafting through. She heard the flutter of bat's wings and saw them gliding their two-dimensional way over a bend of the painted trees. She watched the paintings for a few minutes. They were so realistic, but so obviously art, and yet everything in them moved. The jewels sparkled, the trees shivered gouache branches in the summer wind. Tempted, she reached out a hand to cup a painted apple and it came away golden in her fingers. Sarah held it a moment, and then left it at the base of the perch. _He must sleep as an owl,_ she thought. _This perch is high enough to keep him out of reach of the goblins, and is too slippery to climb._

He sleeps in the crest of the moon, in a painted garden of delights.

She was mystified, but gratified. It hadn't been what she'd expected, but it felt right, and she found herself feeling some sympathy for the Goblin King. After the messy and dangerous chaos of the throne room, this place felt like a comfortable

_cage_

place, a pleasant

_box_

place where she could rest and think in peace and privacy. _It must be hard on him-_

You stop that now, Sarah Williams! she scolded herself. Whatever else had happened, the Goblin King had abandoned his duties and dubious prerogatives, leaving things for her to clean up-dangerous things like goblin barbers. His magical mystery bedroom wasn't even part of the equation.

And speaking of cleaning up...

The artful waterfall rushing into slower-moving pools against one garden wall was also a cascade of white towels, mirror, and a sunken tub of hot running water. There had to be a wardrobe in this garden, because when she'd been here last Jareth had changed his clothes six or seven times in less than ten hours. She looked around with a careful eye. There. There was a wooden gate set in the stone wall. She thumbed the latch and opened it. Inside there was a bathroom, shockingly modern, with white tile and porcelain. That solved one problem at least, and she was glad she didn't have to try to use whatever facilities the goblins did. The overhead light was flickering fluorescent. An unpleasant space, functional, without mirror or shower. _The necessary,_ she thought, remembering her granny's name for the washroom. She wondered if the light stayed on perpetually or if it went out like a fridge when the door was closed. She closed the door.

The false moon glowed in the false twilight.

How she longed for a desk to be in here! A desk with papers. Hell, even a book, even if it was in a language she couldn't read. But there were no writing implements and no paper anywhere. There were no clues at all as to the private life of the Goblin King. This room might have been used yesterday, or never in a hundred years. She longed for an orgy of evidence, a series of clues, a videotape, a map with X-Marks-The-Spot to tell her what to do next. Heck, she'd even take a death-threat or a blood-scrawled hex sign forbidding her to go on.

_No, I wouldn't,_ she smiled to herself. _Nothing is what I'd expected, beginning with beginning here in the center of the Castle instead of the outer edge. Painted trees that let down real fruit. A chicken king to substitute for the real one. No idea how to proceed, and a destination- you, Jareth-that can shift on a dime. This is exactly as it should be._

She eased down into the broad gray-velvet softness of the un-stone-wall-couch. A bank of wisteria was a green wool rug embroidered with living purple flowers. She was sleepy and well past a functional time of night for thinking. She pulled the rug around her shoulders. It was heavy and just warm enough.

_Take off your clothes or you'll regret it in the morning,_ her mind whispered. She wriggled out of them and heard them drop to the floor, and snuggled deeper under the rug. It had a scent, not flowery, but like city pavements in summer after a rain, with a note of something dark, like sandalwood or amber, the subtle funk of masculine flesh, a bitter tang of cigarette smoke. It was a tricky smell, and it made her feel relaxed and excited at the same time, and just a little … she rubbed her nose in the cushion and stretched. _Oh,_ she thought. _That scent._ This room, however long unused, smelled of him. That was the smell of Jareth, an elusive smell for an elusive king. She smiled and drifted...

"Hello again, Sarah," she heard him say. His tone was fond, and she felt fond of him, too, and knew by that open fondness that this was a dream. But it seemed very real. He was kneeling beside her, arms folded under his chin just on the lip of the couch, face to face with her. He tilted his head so he could look in her eyes. "I wasn't expecting you." He smiled at her, briefly touching a lock of her hair. "Avoided a nasty haircut, did you? Well done." She smiled back. _Jareth,_ she thought. _I'm so glad I found you._

"Technically, I found you. I felt the world shift when you arrived. But no reason to bicker over trivialities. You're here now." He gave one slow, deliberate blink, and his voice became stern. "Tell me why I shouldn't send you right back home again. You're far too old for adventures like this." He looked the same. Just the same. He hadn't aged a day.

"I'm younger than you," she retorted, but the heat of her voice was diffused with pleasure. "I can't go home yet," she said. "I can't. I made a promise." She reached out to touch him. He flinched away just before her fingers made contact with his cheek. "Please," she said. He looked at her, then bent his face, fitting his cheek to her palm. "Warm," she said. "Alive."

"Yes." His eyelids fluttered with pleasure. "You want to find me that badly?"

She wanted to run her fingers through his hair; take him in both hands, pull him in beside her. She felt her naked skin caressed by the flower-garden blanket, and wanted to peel it away and offer him everything. She felt very strong. _I could cover you and make you warmer,_ she thought. But she didn't. Somehow she knew that he was suffering this one touch and would be insulted if she attempted more.

"Tell me what I have to do," she said. "To stay."

"I've left a number of tasks undone," he said after a few moments. She felt his jaw move under her hand. So strange that a mouth as spare as a hatchet-slash could make sounds so profound. "I've left quite a few. To find me, you'll need to follow where I've gone and finish what I've started. If you find me, there will be one last door I'll need your help to open. Are you willing to do that?"

"Yes," she said. "Oh yes." He took her hand between both of his, the leather of his gloves slippery on her skin. He caressed her hand and brought it to his lips, and gently kissed her wrist. Her veins exploded like stars under his mouth.

"Then don't turn back," he murmured in the dark, his voice fading as surely as the rest of him.

"Jareth!" she called. But he was already gone.

######  **Soundtrack for Chapter 2**

"In the Hall of the Mountain King" -Grieg  
"King of Lullaby" -Eiffel 65

**Next... Chapter 3: "Good Knight, Goblin Market"**


	3. Good Knight, Goblin Market

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Soundtrack for Chapter 3
> 
> "Animal" -Miike Snow  
> "Astral Conversations (B-Side)" -ASH

**Good Knight, Goblin Market**

* * *

 

She imagined that Jareth was still there, still kissing her wrist. It tickled in a definite, real way. She opened her eyes and looked, expecting to see him. Instead, there was a bangle cuffing her left arm. She stared at it a moment, trying to credit what she was seeing. Light as cigarette paper, heavy as a shackle, it was an openwork metallic cuff of silver vines and white leaves, intertwined with fragile strands of gold and black silk. She shook her hand. It was comfortable, but had definite weight to it. It looked very familiar, but she couldn't quite place it.

"Oh, shit," she moaned. What was this? What had she said to him? "Oh, no." She closed her eyes. He'd been there; right there, and instead of letting him send her home, she'd begged him to stay. She blushed. Oh, it wasn't fair. It wasn't fair at all. The sleep of reason bred monsters and the sleep of the Labyrinth bred defenseless admissions of affection for the Goblin King. Confessions, kisses, and gifts. She opened her eyes again and stared at the weird what-was-it, vambrace? Cuff? Love-token?

Sarah had a momentary urge to take it off—or rip it off, because there seemed to be no obvious catch and it looked delicate enough to snap easily—but checked the impulse. _Fairy gifts are dangerous_ , she thought to herself, rolling her wrist over and back, enjoying the way it seemed to catch and absorb the light. _Dangerous to accept, but even more dangerous to discard_. The gold and black strands caught her eye. _Is that his hair? And mine?_ She fretted. Was this a sentimental gesture or some sort of warning? She brought it to her lips and kissed it, just where he had kissed her in her dream. The little silver-white leaves seemed to tremble and flutter against her mouth. She closed her eyes. _I'm sentimental,_ she thought sadly. _He doesn't have to do anything but appear before me and I'm fourteen again, wincing at and adoring his every move. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair!_

_No time for that!_ She scolded herself in a friendly voice. _Maybe it's unfair, but that's how it is. I agreed to take up his challenge, dreaming or not. It's time to begin!_ She squeezed her eyes tight, rebellious, and made a slow, sensual stretch. Then, afraid she'd never summon the will to do it, she threw back the rug and planted her feet on the floor and greeted the day with defiant glee.

She hummed a little ditty under her breath as she stepped into the hot bath, thinking about the plan for the day. As she soaped herself, keeping her left wrist out of the water, she looked around the room again. Daylight had changed it, but not by much. The perch was a ghost-moon and the light came from a golden disc on the ceiling that burned with a thousand tiny sconce flames. The twilight-navy painted sky of the night before was now early yellow-green dawn. The painted trees, fruit and hawthorn and poplar, seemed closer, shuttering her in privacy. A cricket chirped somewhere, marking the temperature. It would be a warm day, good for travelling. Thank goodness it hadn't rained in the night.

She felt very jaunty as she stood on the steps of the castle twenty minutes later, freshly washed, freshly combed, and her pack on her back. There was only one complication. Yimmil was stuck to her ankle like a nervous cat in a strange house. He'd apparently slept in the corridor outside the King's chambers, and when Sarah came out, he'd executed an adorably floppy bow. "I go with you, Yes-Ma'am-Lady," he said cheerfully. Sarah sighed, feeling a bit like she had when she'd volunteered as a job-shadowing mentor for earnest-eyed high school students. "Okay," she said. "But you do what I say. No!" she said when Yimmil made a move to climb up her jeans and catch a free ride on her shoulder. "If you can't walk, you don't go." _Honestly, goblins._ Sarah rolled her eyes Jarethward, feeling simpatico with him.

There were two milk-bottles aside the door, still cold. She grabbed one and sipped it as she walked down into the Goblin City. The first order of business, she decided, was to try to find Hoggle, Sir Didymus, and Ludo and pump them for information. How long had the King been gone? And why hadn't they told her? She felt a flash of annoyance but tamped it down. Ludo was good and sweet, but rather dense. Sir Didymus was brave and kind, but prone to excitement and his own self-appointed tasks. And she hadn't needed either of them for much longer than she'd needed Hoggle. So why hadn't Hoggle come to tell her the Goblin King was missing?

She recalled with perfect clarity what he'd said to her when she was fourteen, getting around the edges of making fun of his abasement before His Majesty, King of Pants and Murder Devices. "I'm a coward, and Jareth scares me." Hoggle was the only one to give her the Goblin King's true name, which she understood later to be an immensely courageous act. But he'd done it while warning her how dangerous the Goblin King was—not that she'd really needed the warning, since that was immediately after their run from death by spiraling, moving blades. Hoggle was sensitive and perceptive, and protective of her. If the Goblin King had gone, likely Hoggle would have felt nothing but relief. But only if Hoggle knew where the Gob-

She stopped suddenly and did a spit-take of her milk. "HOLY cats!" There just outside the stone curtain-wall, on three spikes, were three enormous severed heads. _Goblins?_ She wondered, wiping her mouth with her sleeve. Flies buzzed around them; what little blood there was looked greenish, and they smelled of rot. Revolted but curious, she stepped closer and saw that each spike had a little wooden plaque nailed to it, and paper affixed to those. She couldn't read the words at first, but then they swam into focus, as if the letters were self-translating into English.

**SEE HOW THE GOOD KNIGHT METES OUT JUSTICE TO THOSE WHO BREAK THE KING'S PEACE**

The message was the same under each head, but under the first message was the word **TREASON**. The second was the word **BRAWLING**. And the third was the word **THIEVERY**. She stood back, goggle-eyed, and slowly moved the milk-bottle behind her back. "Yimmil," Sarah asked, "Whose heads are those?"

"Magic heads!" Yimmil said happily, filching her milk. "All around the city is magic heads!" He was very matter-of fact, though Sara had never seen goblins as big as these before. She circled carefully around the heads and entered into the Goblin City. Well. Things had gotten a whole lot more serious in the Goblin City since she'd been here, though admittedly back then it had been at the head of a tiny army bent on wholesale war. Perhaps the Goblin King had found it necessary to institute some changes after that silly, brief, and utterly triumphant battle for the Castle. As soon as she got properly inside the City, though, she suddenly realized why the King's Peace was so rigorously enforced. The Goblin City had been a collection of bucolic hovels seventeen-some years ago. Now it earned its name. It truly was a city. The buildings had grown taller, with upper stories overlapping the edges of the lower ones in increments until it all seemed night-time. The street she was on debouched into a long plaza and it was full of goblins.

It must be a market day, she saw. Not every day in a medieval city was a market day, and she'd had some arguments with the producers of a short-lived faux-medieval soap opera who insisted that the market be a perpetual open-air mall. She'd offered the idea of a tavern instead for the social scenes—medieval people were nuts for their grog—but had lost that fight. No matter, they had scrimped her fee and the show had toppled after a half-hearted three episode run. So, Market Day at the Goblin City. Goblin Market. She chuckled to herself. An historical European market day resembled a cross between a flea market, a farmer's market and a carnie sideshow, and there was all of that here, well underway. She paused at the edge, at a display of potatoes and onions still with the dirt on them, getting a glimpse of the crowd. Goblins were here in abundance, but she could see there were other types of creatures as well. Her head felt dizzy at all the varieties of magical humanoid creatures gathered in one spot. Some she could identify, but most left her reeling.

There were graceful figures escorting bowls holding vermillion fish that lazily waved their hair-fine tails at items they wanted to buy. There were Rackham dwarves dickering over a selection of open-mouthed laughing green rutabagas. There were enormous armored hoplites whose armor was layers of origami frogs. Beyond was a decrepit carousel turning its rusty way by means of harnessed ostriches. There, down the center of the square, a grated vent gave off a screaming puff of steam and minutes later a crowd of strange and beautiful, otherworldly people were rising up recessed stairways into the central plaza. A sign over the arch indicated that below were subways leading to London, Mercatroid, Bonny Dark and Fiddler's Green (on the half-hour, Twos-days Thor's Day and Sinday). Above all, there were goblins, the clever and the stupid, the small and the taller, the laughable and militant, seeming to be the center of all the commerce.

She was considering getting her phone out to snap some discreet pictures, and cursing that impulse that had made her leave her good camera behind, when she saw someone looking at her. She thought for a moment he was human, but he had two short ivory horns curling out of his thick, curly, dark hair. He gave her a glance that seemed full of ominous warning, and mimed flipping a hood over his head. He repeated the action twice, grabbing the lapels of his red wool coat. Sarah was caught between amusement and terror with this dumb show, until he walked over to her and pulled the blue scarf around his neck and offered it to her. "Put this on, you pretty idiot," he said with quiet amusement and exasperation, "Over your head and hide your ears before you get yourself in trouble." At once she understood, and wrapped the cotton length the way he directed. "That's better," he said. "Little human girl, what are you doing here? And can I escort you to the nearest exit back to Chicago or Portland or Diagon Alley or wherever it is you've come from?"

"Is not girl!" screeched Yimmil, kicking at the man's shins. "Is Yes-Ma'am-Lady!"

"Yes, thank you, Yimmil, that's quite enough," Sarah said, but glad the little goblin had said something before she made a defensive and prickly ass out of herself in front of this handsome stranger. "I'm a guest of the Goblin King," she said. "And I've got things to do on his behalf."

"Goblin King!" The man in the red coat tilted his brown face to the air and laughed. "What a story." He scrutinized her for a moment then shrugged. "The Goblin King, who's been absent these seven years, sets tasks for a human girl?" He had an American accent, seasoned with the edge of the New York gutter. "It's impossible enough to believe." He laughed again. Sarah found herself irritated, but not offended. Well, perhaps offended. Whoever this tall man-satyr-white-knight was, with his eyes like the oblong slashes of woodcut geishas, and his flexible, pretty mouth, it was hard to be angry with him. She was suddenly, painfully reminded of Jareth, although they were nothing alike. Well, nothing except the sexy snark, which would be plain disdain without the charisma. He stopped laughing just a moment before she would have joined in, and looked at her seriously. "So where's your hall pass, Miss?"

"My what?"

"Your token. Your charm. His favour. In a word, proof. Otherwise I send you right back to your proper world. I couldn't have you on my conscience. You're too sweet and too dumb to last long here."

"No-Sir-Lord, you is rude!" Yimmil barked. "Yes-Ma'am-Lady not dumb!"

"My goblin companion ate his Wheaties today," Sarah said, hands on her hips. "I'd like to see you try to make us do anything." She bared her left wrist with a flourish, showing the silver bracelet around her wrist. "And the Goblin King's, what, token? Will this do?"

The horned man was instantly contrite. "My apologies, Milady." He swept her an incredible, outlandish bow, one leg outstretched before him, the other canted behind him at a dancer's angle. She saw the scabbards of two swords at his belt as he did so. He bowed gracefully and respectfully enough that she felt relatively mollified. "Sincerely. My name is Finnvarrah-Vercingetorix. You can call me Finnvah. I'm at Milady's service."

"It's Sarah," she said, irritably reminded of Yimmil's perpetual 'Yes-Ma'am-Ladys'. "Just Sarah, thank you … Finnvah."

"Just-Sarah-"

"Sarah."

He shrugged in annoyance. "Sarah, what on Earth and Under are you doing at the Goblin Market?"

"I don't know, shopping? Thanks for your scarf, and your offer, Finnvah, but I'll be on my way now. Good day." She knew it sounded like "Fuck you," but that was approximately what she meant. She turned on her heel and walked into the crowd.

"No-Sir-Lord is always rude," Yimmil muttered at her knee. "Big-boots bossypants."

She was inclined to agree. "He's not a goblin, is he?"

Yimmil made a rude sound. "No-Sir-Lord no goblin. Human blood in him, very strong. But he come here and try to tell the goblins what to do. Fetch this! Bring that! Don't touch that thing! Don't pick that scab! Bossypants. Goblins don't want him." Yimmil's tone darkened. "He carry iron blade. _Iron blade_. Very scary, No-Sir-Lord."

"How long has he been here?" Sarah asked.

"Long time. Weeks? Used to be vees-ee-tor, but now stays all the time."

"Yimmil," Sarah asked carefully, "Is No-Sir-Lord the Good Knight? The one keeping the King's Peace in the Market?"

Yimmil laughed raucously, drawing some attention to them. "Oh, no. That other. Other knight!"

"Hm," Sarah said thinking. "Sir Didymus," she said. It had to be Sir Didymus. She'd met him last on her adventures, and so it was meet and proper that she find him first this time. Of course, it all made sense. Sir Didymus was the Good Knight. "Do you know of Sir Didymus?"

"Yes-Ma'am-Lady, he in the City."

"Take me to him, please, Yimmil," Sarah said. They left the Market and wandered quickly through the dense towering streets of the Goblin City, passing by two more triads of spiked heads on their way out of the market plaza, until they came to the very outskirts. Sir Didymus was standing there in front of the great bronze gates, loyal steed Ambrosius trembling at his side.

"My Lady!" he said, doffing his cap, ready to give her some flourishing speech of reunion and welcome. Her heart glowed with love for him. "My Lady!" he said again, this time in warning, brandishing his staff fiercely. Sarah looked over her shoulder. Somewhere along the way they'd picked up a tail. Two nasty-looking trolls, in leather armor and clubs, had been sneaking up behind her. Now, pretense discarded, five yards away, one of them brandished his weapon in a way that made Sarah nervous for her life and limb.

"Dinner!" he boomed. "Skinned and roasted human!" Yimmil, squeaking, climbed her jeans like a baby kitten and shrieked his terror in her ear. "Goblin stuffing!" shouted the other.

"Back, you fiends, or taste the justice of the Good Knight!" called out Sir Didymus as he plunged forward, to put his tender and frail body between her and certain violent doom. "My Lady, save thyself and thy retainer! I shall deal with these fell creatures!"

Sarah narrowed her eyes. She wasn't going to watch Sir Didymus die in a one-sided fight. She shrugged Yimmil and her pack to the street, reached in, and pulled out her gun.  


* * *

 

**Next... Chapter 4: "The Laughing Gnome"**


	4. The Laughing Gnome

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Soundtrack for Chapter 4:
> 
> "Warrant" -Foster the People  
> "The Laughing Gnome" -David Bowie

 

**The Laughing Gnome  
**

* * *

  
She was dying. That much seemed likely. But at least she'd made her last stand like an American, brandishing her gun like an idiot, thinking it would solve her problems. There was little comfort in the thought.

She'd run in front of Sir Didymus, taking care to draw and aim and fire on a held breath. The bullet, perfect and true as her aim could make it at the range, had embedded itself in the forehead of the first troll. He'd looked surprised for a moment, but instead of toppling to the ground, dead, he'd merely scratched at the wound in confusion and anger, and changed her, swinging his club. The second bullet she fired did no more good than the first. Like a wasp-sting, it only made the troll angrier.

The club had caught her in a full-body uppercut. _Wow_ , she thought, feeling the air leave her along with her breakfast milk and her ability to comprehend lethal pain. _I'm flying!_ And she was, she was flying, but her flight was arrested by the brass gates, which caught her and did inertial damage to her spine. She landed sitting up, like a rag-doll, against the city walls and watching the rest of the fight take place. She wasn't sure what she was seeing, only that it was probably Sir Didymus' last moments, and that it was all her fault.

A red whirlwind flew down the alley, spinning with lightning-strikes of silver and gold, cutting the hamstrings of one troll and severing the hand of another. "Avaunt ye!" the whirlwind cried. "Hie ye back to your homeland and never return to the Goblin City, lest you feel the full weight of the King's Justice on your heads!" She heard Sir Didymus barking in triumph, and heard Ambrosius howling, and felt Yimmil murmur worriedly in her ear, but she closed her eyes. She was past thinking. "Let's get her to the Laughing Gnome," she heard a familiar voice say. "We need to get under cover and she doesn't have much time left." And then strong arms had picked her up. _Oh god, don't do that, just leave me, I'm done for._ The pain was unbearable. She tried to scream, but all that came to her lips was bubbling froth.

_I'm dying_ , she thought. She was being put down on some solid surface. It was dark, though she wasn't sure if this was due to their surroundings or just part of her life being extinguished. A face leaned over hers. _Jareth_ , she thought. _Have you come to me now?_

But it wasn't Jareth's face, it was Finnvah's. He looked frightened and angry. He leaned over her and put his hand on her waist. "You've got four broken ribs, a punctured lung, and the back of your skull is cracked," he said to her. "I should have sent you home." His voice was shaking. "Sarah, I have to help you. You're going to feel very… odd for a few minutes."

She wanted to ask him what he meant, but his hands moved on her, cupping over her ribs and pressing in painfully. "Look at me," he said. She did. She didn't understand what was going on, but his eyes were golden-brown, and clear. His face was so close to hers. His pupils seemed to dilate as he hummed one low note, and she breathed it in. He smelled like sex and honeyed almonds. She exhaled, choking on her blood, and his nostrils flared as he took her breath in. Everywhere he touched her seemed to tingle and burn with an intense heat that coursed through her veins. It spread until every nerve, from her head to toes was alive. Her vision blurred, so she closed her eyes.

"Oh," she gurgled. She made more noises. She couldn't help making them. They weren't noises of pain. She felt good. She felt so good. She felt sexy. She wanted to writhe under that touch, and moments later, she found she could. When the pleasure ebbed, she found she was clutching Finnvah's coat as if he were her property, squeezing her thighs together in the hot rhythm of her blood. She blushed, but didn't release him all the same.

"I should have sent you home." He shook his head in disgust. "Fragile humans." He pushed her covetous hands away from his coat and helped her sit up, rolling his eyes as once again she reached for him. "Wait a moment and this will pass." The lust faded and logic took over as she glanced around at her surroundings. She'd been deposited on a goblin-sized table, and there were goblin-sized chairs and benches, and a summer fire in the grate. Sir Didymus was watching anxiously from one bench, and Yimmil was squeaking nervously as he shook from the floor. Finnvah took a step back and gestured,. "Welcome to the _Laughing Gnome_. Generally it's a tavern, but today it's a makeshift hospital for—"

"Fragile humans, I know," Sarah said irritably. Finnvah's magic hadn't been absolute. She still had a raging headache and, in the absence of the pleasure he could apparently give, she could feel bruises he hadn't been able to completely heal, and a good dose of mortification that she pushed away. She wished she had packed aspirin, or cyanide—anything to shut up the agony in her nerves that still remained. "I could have handled that!" she said angrily to Finnvah. Her body was shaking with unused adrenaline. "You didn't have to get all—big-boots-bossypants on me!"

His eyes widened in surprise and hurt, and she was almost sorry, but then he pointed a finger in her face and shook it, _actually shook it_ , as if she were a child. "You were stupid! Stupid! What use is a gun against full-blooded Grinnerkin? That's like using harsh language against a steamroller." His volume increased until he was shouting at her. "You're an idiot! A typical human idiot! Not even creative with the stupid!"

"You be nice to Yes-Ma'am-Lady!" Yimmil howled up at him. Sarah tried to block out the noise, glad for her amen-corner in the body of a little goblin no higher than his enemy's boot, and wondered if she was going to vomit. She swayed on the table, her vision blurring. Fin's hands caught her under her armpits.

"Once more into the breach," he growled, holding her against him with one arm and cupping her skull with another. _Nope_ , she thought _, I think I'd rather die than have to thank you for saving me_. But she looked in his eyes as he looked down at her, and felt the icy-sweet pleasure crash into her flesh like a breaking wave. When the feelings ebbed this time, she had trapped him with her legs, grinding her hips against his crotch. From the state of him, he was enjoying it _. Is it rude to stop?_ She wondered. _He might think I don't like it_. She smiled wickedly and stopped the motion of her hips, hearing a strangled noise from the bench beside her.

Sir Didymus was staring at them in open-mouthed astonishment. He blinked his good eye twice. "Ah ha-ha, why don't I just go tip us a brew," he said, jumping down and going over to the kegs by the bar. Sarah looked at Finnvah again, who seemed terribly pleased with himself, and maddenlingly superior. She punched his chest to get him to move, and tried her legs.

"What was that you did?" she asked, stretching and flexing her joints. Yimmil seemed to believe it was some sort of game, and copied her.

"Oh that?" Fin's voice was sardonic. "It's my Gift," he said smugly. "It's for healing, but it has, how-do-you-say, side effects? On-your-side-effects? Or on-your-back or against-the-wall effects?" He smiled at her, a flash of white teeth in his honey-brown face. "I must have satyr blood in me, that's what my father thinks." Sir Didymus returned with four murky-looking pint glasses, a shallow bowl for Ambrosius, and a fat pitcher to fill them all. Finnvah poured out a round for everyone and sat down. Sarah sat opposite him, and Yimmil tried to grow into her side, his arms hugging her tight. She patted the little goblin and tasted her beer. It might have been brewed in a shoe, which meant it tasted better than American beer.

"Sir Didymus," she said, the sight of him making her remember what she'd been going to ask him before her unexpected near-death experience. "How did you become the Good Knight?"

"My Lady?" Sir Didymus looked confused for a moment. "I am not the Good Knight, I am merely a follower of his bright shadow."

"What?" Sarah covered her confusion with another swig of beer. The taste was less vile this time. "You're not the Good Knight?"

"Gentle Lady, no." Sir Didymus stood up on his bench and raised his glass. "To the Good Knight!" he toasted heartily. Ambrosius barked, and Finnvah tapped his glass against the little knight's, echoing his toast, and they both drowned their brew. Sarah hid her smile. It was hard to dislike the Finnvah when he was obviously such good companions with Sir Didymus. And there was the whole saving-her-life-with-sexiness thing, too.

"My Lady," Sir Didymus continued, pouring himself and Finnvah another tipple, "In the years after you left, the Goblin City trebled in size, and many goblins from many worlds took refuge here. When the Goblin King left, there was anarchy in the Goblin City. Several contingents attempted to seize the throne in the King's absence. Others took to arson, theft, and murder. The very Goblin Market was in danger of collapsing. But then the Good Knight came to me at the ford and impressed me into his service. Together we sought out and put all the enemies of the Crown and the Kingdom to the sword. What mighty battles we had in those days! But the Good Knight was on a most important quest. When he left the city, he charged me to keep the name of the Good Knight fresh in the minds of all those in the Goblin City, and to serve as his strong arm in his absence."

"And Finnvah—"

"No-Sir-Lord!" piped up Yimmil, letting out a legendary belch.

"Young Finnvarrah-Vercingetorix is my comrade-in-arms, and together we keep the King's Peace in the name of the Good Knight."

_Well, that throws my first theory into a cocked hat, she thought. Sir Didymus isn't the Good Knight, and No-Sir-Lord isn't either. Could it be…_ Sarah glanced at Finnvah, who had a slight smile on his face, as if he knew something she didn't. He probably did. "Can you describe what he looked like?" she asked Sir Didymus, whose eyes brightened. She bit her lip, half-certain before he spoke what he was going to say.

"Yes, My Lady! The Good Knight is one of the Gentry, the Fae Folk, that most highborn race. He was tall, as tall as you, with eyes the color of day and night, dressed in a white coat of enameled armor. Fair and pale, with a curved brooch around his neck. He carried no other standard but his goodness and purity, and fought boldly with a naked shortsword of dull bronze."

Sarah was about to say, "You're describing the Goblin King." _Well, not so much the goodness and purity bit_ , she thought, but then, Sir Didymus always tended to get a little purple with his prose when matters of duty and honor were concerned. But she stopped because Finnvah put his hand out on the table in front of her and tapped it, and she saw the warning look in his eyes. She paused to drink and collect her thoughts.

_So the Goblin King is the Good Knight, she thought. And Finnvah knows it. Why on Earth—or Under, as he would say—is the Goblin King disguising himself as a white-cloaked do-gooder? But then… Kings in disguise as humble knights errant is traditional, isn't it? Shakespeare's Henry V did it, to gauge the mood of his people. King Richard in the Errol Flynn Robin Hood movie did it, stooping to conquer by engaging the love of the common people instead of the nobility who might betray him_.

She looked at Yimmil. Yimmil hadn't known the identity of the Good Knight, and if he had, she had few doubts as to what the goblins would have done. They would have picked up the Goblin King as easily as they'd manhandled, goblinhandled, her, and dragged him back to the castle by main force, never to let him go again. She sipped her beer and let the menfolk chatter around her. _The Good Knight was Jareth's way of looking after the safety and security of his goblins in his absence_. She looked at Sir Didymus again. He and Finnvah were reminding each other of the fine key points of good fights they'd had.

_Sir Didymus has never met the Goblin King, but hates him for my sake and because he abandoned his duties and responsibilities. Or so he thinks. I can't break his heart by telling him his noble friend and the despicable Goblin King are one and the same_. Sarah caught Finnvah's eye and gave him a nod. "Had you ever met the Good Knight before?" she asked Sir Didymus.

"Once, noble lady, when he gave me my commission to guard the Bridge against any who would cross without my permission!" Sir Didymus looked sheepish for a moment. "I broke the Bridge, my lady, and was without purpose or hope until the Good Knight returned to give me a new duty!"

"It's not going well, is it?" she asked sadly.

Sir Didymus straightened himself out with a triumphant flourish, and then seemed to crumple from uncertainty. "No?" he said, nose and whiskers twitching. "Young Finnvarrah-Vercingetorix is strong and good, but an outsider. The goblins don't respect him."

"We don't want No-Sir-Lord for King. Bossyboots human fae mutt!" Yimmil chirped. He reached for the beer-pitcher with both hands, but Sarah stopped him and poured for him.

"And while the goblins accept and respect me, my, er, ability to make a bold impression on miscreants is somewhat… lacking." Sir Didymus looked disappointed in himself and Sarah felt instantly contrite.

"Nonsense," she said. "You're wonderful, Sir Didymus. No one could do better."

"The problem is," Finnvah said, looking daggers at Sarah, "We're only two people in a very big Goblin City. I can't be everywhere at once, and I'm only a guest here. A badly suffered guest at that." He looked pointedly at the goblin. Yimmil blew a beery raspberry at him.

"I think I have a solution," Sarah said. Everyone looked at her. "But first I need to collect my gear and have a talk with Finnvah. He and I will go back to the city gates. Sir Didymus and Yimmil, you meet us there in half-an-hour."

"A covert mission!" Sir Didymus said. "That's hardly worthy of a knight!"

"I know," Sarah said, "But if my idea is going to work, you're going to have to learn the noble art of dissembling. C'mon Finnvah." She drained her beer and thumped the empty glass upside-down on the table.

Outside, Sarah started walking. She wasn't sure where she was going or if it was the right way, but she was too keyed up to care. She'd seen something just under the sleeve of Finnvah's coat when he'd tapped the table to get her attention.

"Sarah!" he called out, and found her, five minutes later. "It's that way," he said, hooking a thumb to her left. She didn't talk to him, just walked in the direction he'd indicated. "Sarah! Wait! It's dangerous here, stupid girl!"

That stopped her. She turned the full force of a glare on him. "That," she said, "is the very last time you call me _girl_ , Finnvarrah-Vercingetorix." She grabbed his wrist and pushed his sleeve up to his forearm. There, around Fin's right arm, was a cuff of gold metallic plastic interworked with shards of twenty-dollar bills and strands of black and blond hair.

"The favour of the Goblin King," Sarah said. "He's given you a series of tasks to perform. Just like me." She gave him a look as cold and piercing as his iron blade. "So when were you planning on telling me that you're the competition, hotshot?"  


* * *

  
_**Next... Chapter 5: "Humongous Little Wonder."**_


	5. Humongus Little Wonder

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Soundtrack for Chapter 5:
> 
> "Little Wonder" – David Bowie  
> "About Her" –Malcolm McLaren

 

**Humongous Little Wonder  
**

* * *

 

Finnvah was dumbstruck. She memorized that expression, relishing it. His dark skin couldn't hide his blush.

"You're a real piece of work, you know that?" Sarah said angrily.

"And you're a real bitch," he countered, jerking his wrist away. Sarah opened her mouth in astonishment. His blush deepened as she smiled a deadly-sweet smile at him.

"That's right," she said. "A bitch. Queen B to you, Sir Jackass. You were following me, trying to get clues about what I was up to, or trying to find a way to convince me to leave the Labyrinth."

"And saved you from certain death and healed you. Yes, my plan was nothing short of nefarious."

"Give me an explanation, Finnvah. Is Jareth your father?"

His dark face seemed to drain to grey. He put his hand over her mouth, roughly, to silence her. "Who told you his name?" he hissed. "Don't you know what kind of power his name has? It's the power of binding and breaking over his kind! Never say that name out loud again. Gods Below and Above, who knows who might hear you!" He looked angry and frightened, and only when the magnitude of her offense apparently showed in her face did he move his hand away.

"I'm sorry," she said, just as low. "Sorry." She was, too.

"He's my friend," Finnvah said, patting himself down to reassure himself that his dignity was still intact, and began walking again. Sarah had to stretch her legs to keep up. "The Goblin King is one of the Gentry—one of the fae. He's not my father. Or, if he is, he's never treated me like a son."

_How does he treat you, then, Finnvah_ , she wondered, but didn't ask. She had a flash of thought, of the Goblin King coming to Finnvah in his dreams, placing his pale hand over that dark face, drawing those sweet lips in for a kiss. _No. Don't think of that._ It made her feel a niggling something that she refused to name as jealousy.

"But you don't know if he's your father or not?"

"Could be," Finnvah said, blushing again and looking miserable. Sarah wasn't ready to have pity on him. That little feeling in her throat was sucking the air from her lungs. Finnvah had profound feelings for the Goblin King. _And you do too, Sarah_ , the green-eyed monster whispered. _And maybe the Goblin King prefers Finnvah to you. He was summoned here. You're a drop-in_. She commanded her jealousy to shut up, and it subsided into needling murmurs of inadequacy. "But he's not human, and I am, at least enough to count. Why do you ask?"

"I can't figure you out," she said honestly. "You're a puzzle I can't solve."

"Bully for me," said Finnvah. "That must be my fae side working on you."

"I don't know," said Sarah. Jealousy was making her cruel, goading her to prove something. "I have the Goblin King pretty much figured out."

"Oh, you think?" He sneered at her. She realized suddenly that he was threatened by her, was as jealous of her relationship with the Goblin King as she was of his. "What do you know about him?" Finnvah challenged.

"I know he's got duties and responsibilities to attend to. I need to put him back on the throne. That's where he's supposed to be. He's the Goblin King."

"No," Finnvah said sharply, turning on her. "Or yes, but that's not the _only_ thing he is. He's also King of the Labyrinth. And if he wants to make a progress through his own kingdom, in disguise or not, I don't see why he shouldn't have that right. It's _his_ Labyrinth, after all. Much as I'd like to finally see the place, and see him again, I'm stuck here, trying to keep the peace in his absence so he can do whatever it is he wants to do. Why don't you go back to the Castle, Sarah? Go play with the goblins. They seem to love you. Be the Goblin Queen and let him be."

"I can't," Sarah said. "I made a promise." They passed through the street where Finnvah had dispatched the trolls; there was greenish blood trailing back in pools and blotches toward the market showing the path of their retreat, but no sign of the hand— _maybe they picked it up and took it away with them?_ _Maybe they ate it…_ The thought made her swallow nervously and crave some sort of protection. Sarah found her bag and spent some time looking for, finding, and reloading her gun. Finnvah watched her, and particularly her gun, with contempt. She found the scarf Finnvah had given her, too, lying on the ground, and she offered it back to him without comment.

"So are you his mother?" Finnvah's voice was mocking. "Or his pet? You seem to have plenty of ideas of what he should be doing. Or are you actually saying he's your friend too?"

"No," Sarah said. It was her turn to blush. Whatever the Goblin King was to her, he wasn't her friend.

"So you're in love with him then. Little human gi—woman, chasing after him, begging him to love her?"

"I'm not even going to answer that!" Sarah pulled her bag to her shoulders. She found the first cruel idea at hand and struck back, wanting to give him a blow as deep as the one he'd just given her. He really was the competition—for Jareth. "Did he steal you when you were a baby?" She gave Finnvah a knowing look. "Maybe you've been turned into a goblin. But it didn't take." _He could be an abductee. Someone taken after Toby._ _He looks about the same age, maybe a little older._ She saw that the thrust had hit home, drawn blood, and he looked truly hurt. He was giving her a look of guileless incomprehension and dismay so similar to Sir Didymus' that she couldn't feel triumphant.

"That's really insulting," he said. "Are you doing it on purpose, or did you get hit harder in your mushy human noggin than I thought? Where are you getting all this crap?"

"From the story!" Sarah said. "The Goblin King steals babies and lovers, hopes and dreams, and takes them to his kingdom and turns them all into goblins and keeps them forever, and ever, and ever."

Finnvah made a rude noise. "Where'd you get all that rubbish? Have you noticed any shortage of goblins in the Labyrinth? Why would he turn babies into goblins?"

"Well, the story said—"

"What story?"

"The Labyrinth. It's a play I used to read, when I was a child. It was about a King of the Goblins who stole the Queen's baby and her husband, and she had to go through the Labyrinth to win them back." She looked at him with contempt, feeling put-upon, teased. Wasn't this all obvious?

"Sarah," he said patiently, "You're acting as though I'm a character in your story, and know all the chapters that have come before by some kind of magic. You keep asking these questions that I don't know how or why to answer and saying these weird things that come out of nowhere. I have my own life, and I have my own secrets. You're not being fair. _Stealing_ babies is par the course for Gentry, but what's in your story about the Goblin King _turning_ babies into goblins?"

"Nothing." She stopped. Finnvah waited. Sarah felt something fall into place with a shock. "It was something I made up. Because I was being mean to Toby and I wanted to feel special. Like I was part of the story. 'What nobody knows is that the King of the Goblins is in love with me, and he's given me special powers, and he'll turn you into a goblin, Toby, if you don't shut up.' Or something like that." _I had as much power over the story as the story had over me._

_Did I make the Goblin King fall in love with me? Now there's a terrifying idea._

"Toby's my baby brother," she finished lamely. "It was a long time ago."

"I can see why he's frightened of you," Finnvah said grimly.

"Ja—the Goblin King?" There was an interesting idea, not terrifying and somewhat satisfying.

"Not very self-confident, though," he said, grinning.

"Not where he's concerned, no." She grinned back.

"That's wise," Finnvah said. "It's always good to keep some spare humility in your back pocket when dealing with the Gentry. Ah, here we are."

Here they were, back at the bronze gates to the Goblin City. "Help me open these," Sarah said, pulling at the gate-rings, not making much headway. Finnvah joined her and together they swung one portal wide. She looked around the sandy vestibule and breathed a sigh of relief. The gigantic steam-powered guard was still there, still broken in a heap just before the open gates. It was the same door she'd taken before, going in, almost eighteen years ago. "Good," Sarah said.

"My Lady!" Sir Didymus and Yimmil had arrived. She'd expected them to be early, but was grateful for good timing. _I'm the Serendipitous Queen of Good Timing_ , Sarah thought to herself. "Excellent," Sarah said. She looked at all of them. "We're going to repair the clockwork guard here. Then we're going to paint it white. Then we're going to find a goblin that can drive the thing, and then _it_ will serve as the Good Knight." She looked at Finnvah. "It's the only way I can think of to thank you. Thank you for saving my life. If there's a peacekeeper here that the goblins will accept, it means you can find your … friend. And you won't have to worry about Sir Didymus being on his own." She shrugged awkwardly. "I mean, if you think it will work."

"It's brilliant!" Finnvah said, smiling an uncertain smile. "Why didn't I think of that?"

"Because you're an idiot boy, No-Sir-Lord," Sarah said under her breath. Yimmil snickered into his hands, and Sarah hushed him with a command. "Yimmil, we're going to need supplies and a tinker. Sir Didymus, we need to recruit a contingent of intelligent goblins to drive this thing. Finnvah, you're with me." Sarah dug in her bag for her toolkit. "Unless there's something else you'd rather be doing."

"Well, no."

"Good," Sarah said. "Help me straighten this machine out. We'll begin at the beginning."

* * *

She was surprised at how easy, and how natural, it felt to work side-by-side with Finnvah. He'd taken off his long red coat and laid aside his sword-belt, and rolled up his sleeves to his elbows. She saw his brown sun-kissed skin was tattooed in swirling spirals of blue letters of some Tolkienesque language. She liked the clean, slim lines of his body, the way his leather suspenders caught at his chest or hitched the seat of his pants over the admittedly admirable muscles of his posterior. He was stronger than she was, that much was obvious, only allowing her to help him move the pieces of brass machinery to soothe her sense of authority. He had his own toolkit, purloined from some fold or interior pocket of his red coat, and together they used his pry and her socket-wrench to efficiently skin the robot monster and get to the broken innards as Finnvah muttered something about goblins and their unreasonable love of English measurements. He took Sarah's direction when she felt the need to give it, but he seemed in his element. Eventually she stood away and just let him work.

He fiddled with his folded coat and pulled out a small red book. She didn't have time to see the cover, but thought she glimpsed the word **THIRTEEN** embossed there in gold. He unfolded one of the inner pages and she saw it was a book of maps.

"Is that the Labyrinth?" she asked, startled.

"It's my Red Book," he said simply, unfolding a second page. She saw that it was a schematic of the clockwork giant. "My father gave it to me."

"I can't believe you have a map!" she said incredulously. "I would have given my left ear for that when I was here! What's in there?"

"Everything," he muttered, unfolding the schematic and pinning it to the ground with his tools. "Everything but what you really need to know."

Sarah made a noncommittal noise and watched him. Her morning prediction for the weather had proved accurate: it was scalding hot and the light beat down overhead and reflected off the sand so it seemed that everything was a glare of angry heat and desert-dry air.

"Finnvah," she said, twenty minutes later. "Take a break. Talk to me." They were still alone. She rummaged in her bag and offered him one of her bottles of water. He took it and poured a measure over his hair gravely, then whipped it back. She saw, as the sweat and the water drew his thick curls down to corkscrews over his neck, that his ears were long and pointed, and had gold rings in them. _So handsome_ , she thought. He took a deep drink. He handed the bottle back to her, and she poured a little over her neck and then took her own sip.

"What would you like me to talk about?" he asked. He leaned back against the stone wall and sighed with pleasure, and looked at her with the solemn merriment that seemed to be his default expression.

"Tell me about your people," she said. "Tell me about how you met the Goblin King."

Finnvah took back the water, and then reached into a thigh-pocket on his pants and pulled out a pack of Camels. He tapped it several times on his knee and opened it, offering her one, which she took. _He's definitely from my world,_ she thought _. Or has certainly spent enough time there…He's just not quite human_. Finnvah lit their ( _deliciously poisonous, fantastically yummy, disgusting)_ cigarettes with a completely ordinary looking red Bic. She smoked slowly, knowing it would make her sick—she'd quit five years ago—but wanting that old bad habit in her lungs. Finnvah stared at his cherry and slowly exhaled rings of smoke. Finally he looked at her and talked.

"There are a lot of us," Finnvah said. "Us half-creatures, living in the world right next to human beings. People tend not to see us unless they want to. Some of us are born a little strange, and some seem to get strange with age, and some are elders—really old fairy-folk or goblins or kobolds or what-have-you who've lived in the mortal world hiding from strangers for millennia and get sort of glommed in with us because they've got nowhere else to go. My father and brothers are all Red Branch—that's a House where we live together. I don't know when I was adopted, but I remember being very young, very cold, and very frightened until the People found me and picked me up and brought me in."

"How many are there?"

"I said, lots." Finnvah took a drag. "And it's not just Red Branch. Lots. Everywhere."

Sarah nodded. She believed this. Perhaps it was her experience in the Labyrinth as a young teenager, but it always seemed to her as if the world was just tucked full of strangeness and surprise and magic waiting to be discovered. Colonies of fairy-touched people were easy to credit after six years in L.A. "And the Goblin King?"

Finnvah thought, and then stabbed his cigarette out on the wall behind him. "Our rites of passage, among my people, aren't like those of the fae, or the humans. Your little friend is right about that-we're halfway people, mutts. The Gentry—the true fae—tend to dislike us or manipulate us. And humans, well, human beings distrust and fear us. We don't belong fully to the human world or to the faerie world. So when we young ones need to attain our adulthood, we have to spend a year and a month out in the human world, in the human way, living with them. We make a city our labyrinth. It's very hard, but it's necessary."

_Thirteen months!_ She tried to imagine thirteen months in the Labyrinth and her head swam. "How old were you?" Sarah asked.

"Fifteen, sixteen. It's a good age for it. Of course, I had all of the year before to prepare. But I was very lonely, Sarah. My father and brothers put a glamour on me that made me look as human as anyone else. It was sticky, and kept me from accessing my Gifts. The streets of New York are paved with children, and I found some ways to survive that I won't embarrass your pretty round ears to relate. But there was one night in February, when I hadn't been able to find anything to eat and didn't have a squat to sleep in, when I was feeling very bad. I thought I would just go home, give it all up—"

"They would let you do that? Just go home and let it all be over?"

"Well, yes, but who could bear the shame of that?" He gave her a warning glance not to interrupt. He handed her the water bottle and she drank. "So there I was, hungry and cold and sickening for home, when the Goblin King showed up in my alley. He gave me his gloves—which were too big for me—and took me round the corner to some hole-in-the-wall pizzeria and fed me and bought me more beer than was probably good for me. We went out dancing, and he made me feel special. I knew he was one of the Gentry right away. There's a shimmery-ness to them, like they've got extra corners around their backs, like Picasso paintings. But mostly I remembered that he was very, very kind to me, in a very human way. That humanness, that humane-ness, is what I felt the strongest. He's very different from the others of his kind." Finnvah took the water, held it just underneath that sensuous lower lip. "You have questions. Shoot." He sank the bottle in his mouth.

"Was he your first?" She wondered if she even wanted to know the answer.

"No," Finnvah said curtly, swallowing. "I think I wanted him to be. He's very attractive. And he let me know how beautiful I was to him. He invited without inviting, you know? Left it up to me. But I wasn't ready. I was still a child, and knew I would be until my trials were over. I didn't want to give up my virginity before I was ready. Even to him. Sometimes I wonder if he's angry about that. If he had beckoned me any closer, asked me outright, I don't think I could have said no. But he never actually asked."

"Yes," Sarah murmured. "That's how it was for me, too." She looked at Finnvah carefully, couthly, bashful as a medieval virgin introduced to her betrothed for the first time. He was like her opposite, her animus. They'd both undergone a testing, both been given the ambiguous and dangerous attention of the Goblin King. She reached out with her left hand, the cuffed hand, and Fin took it with his cuffed hand, his right.

"That's what makes him so remarkable," Finnvah murmured, looking at her. "He saw through the glamour-saw through the disguise tied on me so tight that it took my father and my brother and another elder three days to unweave-like it was nothing. That's his Gift. He _sees_. He sees things the ways no one else does, and then he helps the half-blind—everyone must be half-blind next to him—see things as clearly as he does. And he just gives his sight away like it was as free and common as air. There are few people on Earth or Under who have the courage to do that. I think there's a little of that in you, Sarah. That must be why you're here."

"Maybe." Her hands trembled. "I don't love him as much as you do, Finnvah. I was so nasty to him. And he was cruel to me. I don't know why he wants me here. I'm afraid he may want to punish me. I've never been able to get anything right where he's concerned." _And here I go_ , she thought, realizing that the little hitch in her breathing was the onslaught of uncharacteristic tears. Damn this Labyrinth and damn her big feelings. She wanted, needed, some sort of sign that she wasn't hateful to the Goblin King. Next to Finnvah, what was she worth? He was perfect. She was a fragile human. But Finnvah came close and put his arms around her, tucked his chin over her shoulder.

"No," he said. "No, Sarah, you're worthy. Love isn't a feeling. It's a doing. You came here. You wear his favour. You're doing exactly what he asked you to do. If he punishes you for that, I'll… I'll kick him. It'll hurt him as bad as your goblin's kicks hurt me, I'm sure, but I'll do it. I'll call him a jerk to his face. I'll drag him back and tie him to the throne." He patted her back soothingly.

"You're a weirdo," she sniffled, surreptitiously wiping her nose on his shoulder. "But thanks."

"Yech," he said, standing away and holding the snot-spot away from his skin. "You're welcome."

* * *

In the hours before sunset, Yimmil and Sir Didymus returned with a long-suffering Ambrosius pulling a cart of parts, paint, and goblins and, heavenly to Sarah's hungry belly, a package of fish and chips wrapped in a newspaper as big as a bedsheet. She picked at her food—the fish must have been troll-sized, but tasted perfectly and deliciously fishy—as the tinkers got to work finishing the repairs, Sir Didymus and Finnvah questioned the potential drivers, and Yimmil fussed with choreographing the paint job for the chassis.

_I'm eating too much fairy food,_ she thought. _I may never be able to go home again._ She blinked and licked her fingers. _So be it._

"Finnvah," Sarah beckoned him into the deepening shadows of the wall. He came over to her smiling. _I could fall in love with that smile,_ she thought. He took her hand and their favours met and embraced. "I need to be going," she said quietly.

"What, now? Alone?" She was gratified in a selfish way by the hurt and denial in that question.

"Alone. No, listen," she said as he opened his mouth to give what she was sure was a chivalrous protest. "This task of getting the Good Knight together is yours. I'm just helping. It won't take you long to finish what we've started here. You'll be able to go out into the Labyrinth in days, or maybe even hours."

"We should go together," Finnvah said, squeezing her hand, looking in her eyes. He wasn't using his Gift, but she felt him warm and alive and close to her. She wanted to melt, but didn't.

"We can't," she said. "I've got to find my own tasks and do them."

He stroked her palm in little circles with his ring finger, and looked at her with longing kindness. "I don't want to go without you. I need you," he said.

Sarah was floored. She'd expected him to make some gambit, some protest about her fragility, her humanness, her inadequacy. His admission hurt like a punch in the gut, or a troll-club to the ribcage. Finvarrah-Vercingetorix need _her_?

"You'll be fine," she said with confidence she didn't in the least feel. She squeezed his strong hand. "You've got your book. Finnvah, I've got to find mine, the one my mother gave me. My Red Book. It's here in the Labyrinth, out in the junkyard somewhere, if it's still there. When I find it, I'll head toward Thirteen, if we count the Good Knight gate here as Seven by the clock. You head toward Four when you're ready. That's about where I came in when I was here."

"Reconsider," he said. His eyes were mournful, and the touch of his hand in hers became a sensual tingle.

"Don't," Sarah said sharply. "Don't use your Gift to manipulate me." Finnvah looked contrite, and tried to pull away from her, but she held tight to him. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, trying to put her intuition into words. _This is what I do, she thought. I solve puzzles. Labyrinths. Stories. Rituals_.

"When you walk the Labyrinth, you're walking yourself," she said. "Sir Didymus is a part of me. So is Ambrosius, and all the other friends and enemies I made when I came here. The Labyrinth takes and gives. What's here is what's there inside you; the things you need to see or refuse to see. Just like your trial, it's something you have to do for yourself. No one else can do it for you. I can manage what the Labyrinth—and the Goblin King—throw at me. I don't know you well enough to know what they could throw at you. Together, we're in danger. Apart, we have a chance to succeed at what we're supposed to do. Do you understand?"

"Why aren't you fae?" Finnvah said grimly. "You really are a Queen, Sarah."

"With a capital B," she said, forcing amusement into her voice. Her thin joke coaxed the ghost of a smile from him. "Listen. This is the way it needs to be done. You've met Sir Didymus, and there are other friends of mine who will help you. I'll describe them to you. Just give them my name and they'll help you."

And, certain now that this was also the way it needed to be done, she leaned up and kissed him gently on his perfect mouth. His lips were delicious. "Share that with Hoggle when you meet him," she smiled, and broke the embrace of their hands, and heaved her bag on her back. He pulled his blue scarf from his pocket and tied it around her neck. "And you keep that," he said. "Until I see you again."

Ten minutes later, she slipped through the outer gates of the Goblin City like a thief's credit card through a hotel door, and was out in the Land of Junk.

* * *

__**Next... Chapter 6: "The Worm, the Pain, and Blade: First Iteration"** _ _


	6. The Worm, the Pain and the Blade: First Iteration

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Soundtrack for Chapter 6
> 
> "The Simorgh Sleeps on Velvet Tongues"-Robert Rich  
> "The Voyeur of Utter Destruction (as Beauty)" –David Bowie

 

**The Worm, the Pain and the Blade: First Iteration  
**

* * *

  
_Twilight, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe_ , she thought. She was being followed.

The junkyard made her nervous. It was alive with slow movement, like a restless beast, as unseen goblins and other creatures less visible tunneled and tracked their way through it. There were no stars, no moon, only the shifty and unstable light of various fires. The Land of Junk was a dump, crawling with vermin and danger. The mounds of garbage and trash were like mountains, some of them twenty, thirty feet tall, and the paths between were thin and spare. She tried not to look at the clusters of hump-backed trash-bundled creatures wending their ways through the piles of broken, busted, and lost things, though she could feel their eyes staring hungrily at her. The air smelled of factory exhaust, library dust, old alcohol, and gamey roast. And she was being followed.

_Only what I take with me_ , she thought. _Only what I bring_. The thought should have brought some comfort, some feeling of control with it. But she wasn't fourteen any more. She was seventeen years older, seventeen years wiser, and she'd experienced directly or vicariously a whole world of dangers mundane and extraordinary. Her fears had multiplied as the years added up, and encompassed threats of rape, of murder, of broken heart and broken bones. She paused to go into her bag and belt her holster. The presence of her gun, heavy at her right hip, didn't do much to make her feel better, but it did something. There were things out here worse than trolls, worse than human predators.

_Stop_ , she commanded herself. _Only what you take with you. Only what you bring. Oh, Finnvah!_ Her mind wailed. _Why did I leave you behind? I'm scared_.

_Keep calm and carry on, Sarah Williams_ , she thought to herself. A rusty fire-poker offered itself from a pile of trash. She fitted it into her hand. It would be useful in prodding the shifting ground under her feet for sinkholes and hidden crevasses. And it was iron. Even the goblins seemed to fear iron _. And so maybe a useful weapon against whatever is following me_.

The light, like the footing, was treacherous. It was all flickers and flames, pulsing and shifting under her eyes and her feet. _I have no idea where I'm going_ , she realized. The last time she'd been here, she'd been so heavily drugged on magical fruit that she'd followed any shadow of direction—even those of the snailbacked hoarders, the gin-drinkers, the junk-sorters. _They tried to make me one of them_ , she thought with a shudder. _And I would have let them too, without my Red Book_.

A noise, a scamper, rustled debris where her footsteps had been a moment before. _There, behind me_. She turned and faced her enemy. In the backlit shadows of a fire, her opponent seemed ten feet tall, taller by far than the trolls who could have easily killed her in the Goblin City. She brandished her poker, breath racing, as her stalker appeared around the hump of a precarious pile…

…and came creeping up the path, no more than two feet tall, the great height merely an illusion of light and perspective. It came closer to her, the odd flickering of firelight giving way to recognition.

"Yimmil!" said Sarah, words half-screamed with relief.

"Yes-Ma-am-Lady!" He ran up to her legs and embraced them. "I find you!" He snuffled against her jeans. "King leave me. Yes-Ma-am-Lady leave me too!"

She kneeled down and put the poker aside, and picked up and held the little goblin. "Oh, Yimmil. You poor darling. I'm sorry."

Yimmil took her face in his tiny hands and looked at her with a child's solemn sadness. "Whyfor you leave me?"

"Because it's dangerous out here for little goblins," Sarah said. Yimmil tried to wrap his arms around her neck, but they couldn't quite reach all the way around, so she helped him hug her, nestling him in the crook of her arm.

"Dangerous for Yes-Ma'am-Lady too," Yimmil protested.

"Well, that's what I signed up for." She stood up, grabbing her poker again. Yimmil climbed up to her shoulder and held on to her hair. He weighed about as much as a sparrow. He squeaked when he saw the iron in her hand.

"Bad!" he cried. "Bad iron!"

"It's not hurting you," Sarah said reasonably. Still, she held it low and away from the goblin. "Anyway, I need it. Yimmil, why are you so scared of iron? I thought goblins were pretty much indestructible."

"Cold iron scary!" said Yimmil, moving to her left shoulder, at apogee with her weapon. "Can burn us. Bind us!"

"But Finnvah carries an iron blade," Sarah said reasonably. "And he's one of the People."

"Not him!" Yimmil squeaked. "No-Sir-Lord is New. New People. Human blood. Dangerous. Can't be burned. Can't be bound!"

_There's a favour around his wrist, and a love in his voice when he speaks of Jareth, that say otherwise_ , she thought but said nothing. She went carefully. Where there wasn't a clear patch of sandy dirt path in front of her, she poked with her poker to test the footing. Yimmil sat over her shoulder, holding her hair, peeking out tentatively at the landscape around them.

"Bad place," Yimmil moaned quietly, and Sarah had to agree. She looked up. Had there been stars in the sky above the Labyrinth before? Was the smoke and fume of the junkyard hiding the stars from her? Or was the sky a mirage, an egg-shell, a painting on the curved roof of the world? Like the Goblin King's bedroom, was this place just a box with only the illusion of limitless space?

It was so much larger, the junkyard, than it had been before. The Goblin City was bigger, much bigger, and the path from the outer gates of that City to the Castle had been longer, too. She'd assumed that the Goblin City had expanded the way a human city would, by incorporating spare land outside its borders, spreading out. She'd expected the Land of Junk to be consequently smaller. _But I'm not dealing with a human city, or a human world, she reminded herself. The rules are different. The Goblin City is larger. This junkyard is larger. Is the Labyrinth itself larger?_ It was a disturbing thought in a zone of disturbing thoughts. This quest could take months. Years. Perhaps the balance of her lifetime. _Oh, Toby,_ she thought sadly. _Oh, Dad. I'm so sorry I didn't tell you goodbye._

"Yes-Ma'am-Lady?" Yimmil asked cautiously.

"Hmm?" She prodded the ground in front of her as she picked her way forward.

"Where we going?"

"I'm looking for something," she said. "Something I lost." Her Red Book, The Labyrinth, had been here, somewhere in this mess. The book was in a drawer, and the drawer was in a desk, and the desk was in a room, and the room was in the junkyard. But it was all buried and covered over; she'd broken it open almost eighteen years ago as effectively as she'd broken the floating bubble-ballroom. Its skin had been ruptured; it was all one with the rest of the rubbish-heap, a pile of junk festering and picked-through like all the other identical piles of junk in this hellhole.

_I'm lost_ , she thought. _I'll never find the rubble of my room in all this. I'll never find my Red Book this way._

This was patently true. Was she willing to spend weeks in this terrifying, awful place, never getting anywhere, with the intuitive threat of losing herself in her looking for something else? Should she just give up and go on? She drew her hand over her forehead, and felt the Goblin King's favour rasp kindly against her skin. She looked at it.

_Jareth_ , she thought. _Help me. Show me the way. Surely my need and one of your unfinished tasks could overlap? Please?_ Her eyes were drawn upward as she walked around the corner of a heap, and there, high atop the mound before her, was a short bronze sword, gleaming like Excalibur in the fire-torn twilight. _Oh, thank you_ , she thought. _Thank you, Good Knight_. It was Jareth's sword. It had to be.

She approached carefully, climbing up the midden-pile with both hands and feet, with Yimmil clinging to her back. She reached the top, balancing on two tilting broken chairs, and plucked it out of its resting-place. She looked it over carefully. It was strange. It wasn't like Finnvah's bronze sword at all. Although there was a leather grip stitched to it, the hilt felt strange and uneven. She turned the sword over. The front of it had a rounded and etched hilt and a blade with a channel, and the cross-guard was ludicrously oversized. The back was flat and plain, with no channel, no curvature. There was a round hole in the blade too, near the hilt. She swung it once. It was heavy, and sharp. But it felt like only half a sword. It reminded her of… her eyes opened in surprise. It was one of the hands from the clock in the throne room. The hour hand. _Jareth made time his weapon_. So what was it doing here? She looked around the junkyard from her high vantage point, trying to scout for any landmarks, any sign of what direction she should take.

She felt a tug at her boot.

"Not now, Yimmil," she murmured, and realized the goblin was still riding piggyback. _What the hell?_ She looked down. Coiled around her shin, tight and thick as a python, was a great gangrenous worm.

She took a deep breath to let out a healthy scream, and brandished the Goblin King's sword over her head.

"Stop," said the worm, with a bubbling, choking, horrifyingly courteous voice. "Please don't kill me."

"Let go," Sarah commanded. The worm, slimy and smooth as an enormous length of intestine, squeezed her leg once more and then unwrapped itself and reared up through the mound of rubbish until its snout was at a level with her face. It looked diseased and sick, green and bloated and ragged at the mouth and sliding into pink and grey toward the middle. She couldn't see its terminus. She unsnapped her holster. The worm's mouth was toothless, and its voice seemed to come from somewhere deeper in its throat. But it was listening to her, and that was good. She wasn't prepared for a fight balanced on a pile of shifting trash. "Who are you?" she demanded.

"Leviathan!" the worm gibbered sadly. Part of its length was folded inside its rough-looking mouth, pulsating grotesquely to form temporary substitutes for hard palate, teeth, and tongue. "Leviathan, but once I had another name."

"Don't listen to it, Yes-Ma'am-Lady," Yimmil begged, clutching her jacket with raw panic. "Kill it. Run away."

"Looking," moaned the worm. "Looking for him. For Prince Owl, King of the Goblins."

"Oh?" Sarah said nonchalantly. She moved the sword to her left hand, and kept her poker in her right, ready to drop it and draw her gun with the slightest provocation. "Where's your favour then?"

The worm whipped several more yards of its length out of the trash, and bent and curled itself into a semblance of shoulders, of folded arms. It darted its snout forward repulsively to sniff at her. It snuffled carefully over her wrist, and Sarah flinched back.

"Him! Oh him. I can smell him on you. His hands touched you." The worm darted a coil forward, as if offering a confidence. "He gave me no favors. He touched me, and took everything. All I had was the sword. His sword. His hands touched it. It was mine!" the worm wailed. "Give it back to me!"

The hackles on her back rose, in terror. "What are you?" she whispered. "Tell me!"

"I was a mortal man who loved the Goblin King. See how he betrayed me? See what he's done to me? Long have I searched for him, through all the layers of Hell and Humanity and the labyrinths between. I still seek him. I will find him. I will bind him to me, and I will hold him again in my arms." The voice of the worm chuckled in the semblance of sobs.

"Don't listen," Yimmil begged. "Please don't listen!"

"How would you do that?" asked Sarah. "How do you bind someone like him?" Despite how disgusting the worm was, its voice was strangely soothing. If she closed her eyes or kept it in her peripheral vision, it was almost like talking to another human being.

"Feed him," the worm moaned. "Ring him with salt. Fix him with iron. Call his true name. And then, oh then, pretty girl, pretty good human girl, bring me to him. Let me see him. I want to see his eyes again. I want to see his face."

"Stay back!" Sarah commanded. She took the sword and felt carefully with her back foot to probe for a path back down. "Don't you move."

"Love him," agreed the worm thickly. "Find him. Win him." But it didn't move. It just poised there atop the pile, like a cobra in striking pose, as she picked her way back down, using her poker and the bronze sword like icepicks to lever her way to semi-solid ground. The worm rustled its body, undulated its smooth pink length, and part of its junk-tower burrow seemed to quiver, as if its center might be all worm. _How long is it?_ she thought in terror. _How big?_

She turned her face and ran with the power of terror, as if Hell were on her heels. She picked no direction. She fled in blind panic, blades zipping in front of her as she stumbled and ran as quickly as she could. She only stopped when she couldn't breathe any more. _That cigarette was a stupid idea_ , Sarah, she told herself, gulping for breath. "Yimmil," she croaked. "Is what the worm said true? Was he a human man? Did he love the Goblin King?"

Yimmil dropped from her shoulders; she realized part of her breathing problem was that his arms had been wrapped around her throat. He looked up at her with his ugly, adorable little face. "Yes-Ma'am-Lady, is true. But also not true. Not human any more. Liar. Cheat. Thing! Captured him. Hurt King. Tried to _eat_ King." Yimmil shuddered all over. "Eat goblins, too." He grabbed her legs in a hug. "Let's leave this place, Yes-Ma'am-Lady. Please."

"No," Sarah said obstinately.

She looked up and saw, half-hidden in a tapestry, inset in a pile of trash, a familiar door, a door she hadn't seen for years, a door she needed. "Oh," she said, standing up. "Oh!" And she pushed the door open and went inside.

* * *

_**Next...Chapter 7: "The Worm, the Pain and the Blade: Final Iteration"** _


	7. The Worm, the Pain and the Blade: Final Iteration

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Soundtrack for Chapter 7:
> 
> "How Soon Is Now?" –The Smiths  
> "Prospero's Speech" –Loreena McKennitt  
> "Doomsday Averted" –Rasputina

 

**The Worm, the Pain and the Blade: Final Iteration**

* * *

 

"Doomsday Averted" –RasputinaShe had realized she wouldn't be able to find her childhood bedroom, and her copy of The Labyrinth, in the junkyard. That was patently a fact. So what was another fact? _My childhood bedroom wasn't the only place I kept that book._

Here before her was the memory of another room. It was a tiny, dingy garret apartment big as a postage stamp, where she'd lived her final year of college. Her love for that home had been absolute and eternal. Furnished in a beautiful street-dropped velvet couch, art-nouveau advertisements, and patchouli-stink tapestries, it had a fireplace only big enough to roast marshmallows in. On the crowded scrounged bookshelves, she'd kept her copy of The Labyrinth. In her final undergrad years, she'd rediscovered her obsessive love for her favorite childhood story, and ached to remember her friends—but not to summon them. No, it was Jareth she'd attempted to summon to her here, Jareth alone.

There had been so many attempts to call him to her, but certain parts of the ritual had always been the same. She would fluff her overstuffed ancient armchair and set it near the grate, and would place the footstool close by. She'd wanted him to sit there in the place of honor and speak with her, and she had intended to tire at his knee and listen to him. But the gallimaufry of magic spells she created out of bits and pieces of her Folklore and Women's Studies and Anthropology and Religion classes, and her naked beating heart, had failed to bring him to her. Her witchcraft was apparently as bad as her cooking, because he'd never come.

She had loved this studio apartment as completely and utterly as she loved the magical world of her childhood room. It was the only other place she had in her life that she held so completely whole in her memory, mind and body. _This is what I needed to find_ , she thought.

Two years after she'd graduated, the building had been demolished to make way for some expansion to Triptoleme University's Math-and-Science college. She'd returned for her five-year class reunion and been horrified to discover the creaking apartment-partitioned Victorian mansion had been replaced with an annex and a parking lot. But the junkyard was the place where lost and loved things and places arrived—where things you loved and wanted took on a situational memory life of their own. Her home was here, and it had been waiting for her. It had been waiting, all this time.

"It's just like I remember!" Sarah said happily. If she opened the door again, it would be the junkyard, but inside this room she could pretend that it was nine o'clock in October, with the autumn wind around the eaves of the roof, the tiny fire sputtering in the grate, and a peach pie ( _thank you Marie Callendar_ ) in the oven. She dropped her poker and the sword on the mantel, closed the drapes, bolted the door and went to her wee stove, grabbed two mismatched potholders, and drew the pie out before it burned. Yimmil explored the tiny attic studio carefully, before bouncing on her creaky bed, half-hidden behind tacked-up drapes, and curled down into the bedclothes. "Safe," he murmured. "This place safe."

"Yes," Sarah said fondly. "You sleep now, Yimmil. We're safe."

She moved through her apartment carefully, easily. Her body remembered every angle and bend. The familiarity was comforting and exciting. As Yimmil snuggled down and caught some shuteye, she dug in her chest of drawers for spare underwear and socks, stretching them over her jeans to size them. She was a little smaller in the bust than she had been in college, but she'd been going through a phase of eating her feelings in her early twenties and an intense body-beautiful Hollywood exercise regimen in her late twenties. At thirty-two, with her body between those extremes, these things would still fit.

She perused her bookshelves and tipped The Labyrinth out into her eager hands. She tucked it into her bag to examine later, and then looked at her bookshelves again. There were books here she loved and wanted… she picked out two or three and dumped them near her bag. _And there's my box of Pentels_ , she thought. _And oh, my old sketchbook! I thought I lost that in the move_ … she paused to open it, and then stopped, looked over at the pile. She sighed and put everything back but the The Labyrinth, and the extra socks and undies. This might be her favorite room, but it was also potentially a trap. Anything else she took and she might as well find a cord and one of the hunchback hoarders and have them tie the lot to her back. She should only take what she really, truly needed.

Sarah went through the pantry and stuffed portable food into her bag, a few toiletries. _That's all_ , she thought, nodding to herself, satisfied. She sat down at the ramshackle drop-leaf table and its tilty wooden chair, and broke down and cleaned her gun. Yimmil snored from her bed like a humming metronome.

She wished she had a spare magazine, but her target instructor had told her that if she needed Dutch courage to win a gunfight then she'd already lost. So she had one magazine with twelve rounds left in it—an extra shot must have fired rogue when she'd been clubbed. Sarah sighed in disgust with herself as she reassembled her gun and chambered the ammunition. Finnvah was right. The gun was a stupid weapon to have in the Labyrinth, but she knew how to use it, and it made her feel better to have something she was good with. The gun, safety on, went back in the holster. She wouldn't be caught without it close to hand again, outside this room. The clock above the stove ticked. The scent of warm peaches and pastry-crust filled her kitchen. She had her Red Book. And this apartment had a nook of a bathroom. Did her situational memory magic include hot running water? It certainly seemed to include electricity and gas heat. She'd try it.

She took care, preparing herself as she had a decade before, with ritual thoroughness. She washed her hair and body with the perpetual Dr. Bronner's peppermint soap that had been her all-and-everything in college, and perfumed her wrists, the backs of her knees, and the furrow of her thighs with oil of sandalwood and a drop of orange essence. The smell made her nostalgic for her body's youth.

She looked at herself in the foggy bathroom mirror. She was different than she had been back then. Her face was a landscape of bones and skin that had slowly shifted and altered over the years, like plate tectonics. Her flesh was looser, the incidental fat of her belly and thighs less bouncy, though still as stubborn, as it had been ten years ago. Small wrinkles had appeared at the corners of her mouth where she'd had dimples before. Her eyes were green, her hair was thick brown, her eyebrows unplucked—still the same. A few gray hairs had come in at her temples. That was it.

_I like myself better now_ , she decided. _Age has seasoned me, body and soul. I know who I am now._ _I almost lost myself back then, in endless yearnings and irritable virginity, lost myself waiting for the Goblin King_.

_Tonight he will come to me_ , she thought, and felt a quivering in her body that was anticipation of desires fulfilled. _Tonight_. She pulled her sleeveless white vampire-victim nightgown over her body. The nylon stuck to her wet skin, became transparent as glass.

She fluffed up the armchair and drew it before the best place by the grate, and added another stick of wood to the fire. She cut a piece of the peach pie, sprinkled it liberally with cinnamon and sugar, and put it on her best plate. She put the plate on the little table by the chair, with a fork at hand.

She took the iron poker and concealed it under the chair. She took the canister of salt from the cupboard and drew a line of it in a wide circle around the perimeter of the room _. Ring him with salt_ , the worm whispered in her mind. _Fix him with iron. Call his name._

_Sarah_ , a part of her whispered fiercely, _What do you think you're doing?_

_Getting even_ , she told it. _Now shut up._

She drew a rotted silk shawl over her demi-nudity. It had been a piano-shawl in some past life, and was coming to bits and fragments around its embroidered flowers and fringe, but its ancient, rich smell comforted her. She sat down on the little footstool before the armchair, and waited.

And waited. The hands of the clock met at midnight. _Jareth, where are you? I want you. I need you. Come to me, please._ She folded her arms over the chair cushion and rested her head upon them. _I won't cry_ , she thought. _I won't cry for wanting him._ But she lied to herself; the tears were already slipping down her cheeks. It really was just like being twenty-two again. All the old patterns of this place were repeating themselves.

_Don't you care for me?_ her anguished soul cried.

"Precious girl, of course I care for you." It felt like the tail-end of a long breakup conversation, one where she'd long since sobbed and cried out all her feelings. He was stroking her hair back up off her ear and temple. Her head was resting on his knee, her hands folded over his lap. He smiled down at her, with a mixture of affection and condescension. "Hello again."

"I'm dreaming," she murmured. "This isn't real." She sat up. His yellow-gloved fingers tangled in her damp hair, drawing through it like a comb.

"You are," he said. "And it is." He kept his fingers locked through a twist of her hair, rubbing the texture through his leather gloves.

"You never came here before," she said, a quaver in her voice.

"I did," he said. "I did." He smiled at her enigmatically. "Many times."

She lay her cheek back down on his knee and he resumed stroking her hair. She looked at him, storing him up. His hair was longer, less uneven, but still fine as spiderweb, streaked with colors that seemed to shift with the firelight. He was wearing brown fawn-patterned pants, soft with unscraped fur, and a brown leather jacket with an absurdly high collar over a loose gi-cut gold-embroidered shirt. His amulet gleamed around his throat. _So beautiful_ , her heart whispered, twisting with love. _Mine_.

The fire crackled in the grate, and Yimmil snored in her bed.

"Do you like Finnvarrah?" he asked, smiling at her, rubbing her hair, tugging gently at a skein so she thought she might die of delight.

"Yes," she admitted.

"But not enough to cleave to him and bring him with you," Jareth teased her. "Instead of a fresh young man in your bed, you've got a rather stupid little goblin."

"Don't insult Yimmil," Sarah gently reproached him. "He's devoted to me."

"Like Finnvarrah is to me," Jareth said, tugging her hair so hard it hurt. "Unlike you, Sarah. Salt in the room? Iron under my chair? Food warm by my arm?" His gaze was cold now, utterly cruel. "You've made improvements on your binding spells since the last time we were here, though the sentiment is the same. Who told you what to do?" For the first time, some real anger seeped into his voice.

"Let go," she said. "You're hurting me."

She was utterly surprised when he abruptly did, unwinding her hair from his fingers and holding up his hand to show it clear of her.

"It's the iron," she said, though she was mostly thinking aloud to herself, "And the salt. You're under my power, aren't you?" He narrowed his eyes but said nothing. Sarah grew frustrated. "Answer me!"

"Yessss," he hissed through clenched jaw.

Sarah smiled. "Good. It's about time we had a talk."

"There's nothing to talk about," he said calmly.

"Your choice, then, Goblin King. You can talk, or you can eat."

He stared his defiance at her, and she watched as his eyes flitted between her face and the food, his disgust evident. "Fine," he said, a moment before she issued an order. "What would you like to talk about?" His voice was cold.

"Peaches," Sarah said. "Fairy food. Toby. The Cleaners. And never coming back to see me."

"Feh," said the Goblin King. "I just told you, I did. I am. I'm here now."

Sarah gave him an even look. "Okay. If that's the way you want it. Your food is there, Jareth. I made it just for you. Use your fork."

Like a toy jerking on strings, trying to master his will against hers, he broke off a forkful, but didn't eat. _Not until I command him to_ , she thought with triumph. "How I despise," he said, "peaches." He said it like a dirty word.

"Then you should have used apples on me instead. Or maybe bananas," she said defiantly. "Bananas would have been appropriate." She tried not to look at his pants. She stood back and wrapped her shawl around her shoulders, like a high priestess at the altar. "Turnabout is fair play, Goblin King. Don't you want your food?" She saw it squirming on his fork; it was crawling with thin pink parasites.

"No," he said. "I very much do not. Sarah," he said, staring up at her. "Don't do this to me."

Sarah raged at him. "You teased me. You hurt me! You rejected me!"

"No!" he shouted at her. "All I did was assume my proper role! All I did was refuse to refuse you anything!"

Somewhere beyond the door, she heard the worm give a lugubrious laugh. Jareth tilted his head. His eyes cut to the door. She thought she saw his nostrils flare. Beyond the door, a sibilant voice called out a name. Jareth's face drained of color, becoming as white as his shirt. "Sarah," he said, fork trembling. "Who have you been talking to?"

"Leviathan," she murmured. "The worm. He told me how to bind you. And I've done it. Who is he to you, Goblin King?"

"He's here," Jareth whispered. He shrank in the chair, as if trying to move as far from the door as possible but unable to leave his seat, still clutching cutlery, still staring at the door. It should have been hilarious. It was horrifying. "The devil," he whispered. "My hell. That filth, here."

"Tell me why, Jareth!" Sarah said coldly, not taking her eyes off him. "You stole my baby brother and put me through the wringer. Did you bring me back here to turn me into a worm? Were you planning for me to end up like _that_? Wanting you and looking for you and never finding you?"

As if his neck were made of great rusty gears, he slowly turned back to look at her. The terror floated off his face when he looked at her, was replaced with admiration and desire. "Sarah," he said softly. "You're not a child any more. Don't seek revenge like one. The goblins brought your brother to the Labyrinth, but I brought you. I gave you a chance. You asked to come. You begged me." He took a breath, and pain swept over his face. "I'm begging you now. Please, Sarah. Please release me from these bonds."

He'd never, ever, not even in her fantasies, said 'please' to her before. She covered her face with her hands. She'd fucked everything up. Everything. There was a heavy wet thump against the door.

"Sarah," he said quietly. "It's not too late. Not for anything. _Please,_ set me free."

"Fine!" she yelled, kicking the poker away from his chair, walking around the room, scattering the line of salt with her feet. She took the plate and the fork from his hands. "Go. Run. Now."

"What, and leave you here alone with my most dread enemy knocking at the door?" He stood and came to her. "Never." He took her face in his two hands. "Thank you," he said quietly, drawing her hair behind her ears. _Another first. A thank-you from the Goblin King._

"What can he do?" Sarah asked, trembling. "You're King of the Labyrinth. He's just a worm."

"Oh, he could do quite a bit of damage," Jareth said, dropping his hands and moving to the door. She heard a crash outside, like breaking glass, and they both flinched. "It's never wise to underestimate human beings, even dead ones." He thought that over. "Especially dead ones." He spied through the peephole, and obviously didn't like what he saw there. "I vowed he'd never find me again. If I break that vow, he has power over me, over the Labyrinth, and likely over your world as well."

"Did you know he was here?" She rushed to the mantel and grabbed the sword. "Jareth, catch." She tossed the bronze blade to him. He plucked it out of the air without even looking, hilt-first, and twirled it in a complex pattern, as naturally as if it were part of his arm, still keeping his eye to the peephole. Dire as the situation was, she had to admire, would always admire, Jareth's style.

"Let's say I knew it was a distinct possibility," Jareth said. "Though it's been thirteen-odd years since I last spared him a thought."

"Go," said Sarah, dropping her shawl. "I'll fight the worm. It's what I'm supposed to do anyway, isn't it? Your task left undone for me to finish. I'll fight him."

"You haven't been fighting him very well up until now," Jareth snarked at her. He looked through the peephole again, and cursed. "He's hungry," he said by way of explanation. "And he's already here."

"I don't understand." She could hear the thumping at the door—the worm was on the other side. And she could hear Yimmil crying out for her, but when she looked over to her bed, he was still there, still comfortably snoring into her pillow.

"He's here," Jareth said. "I am telling you he is here _now_ , Sarah." Somewhere beyond the wall of sleep, she heard the laughter of the conqueror worm.

"Jareth!" she said. "What's happening?"

"You're asleep," Jareth said. "You're dreaming, Sarah. You have to wake up."

"Help me!" she cried. "I don't know how." The door thumped again ominously, cracking.

"Sarah," he said conversationally, coming to her. "You have some cause for your grievance with me. It really wasn't just a peach. And now I need to give you more reasons to be angry with me. I have to hurt you and scare you to wake you up. Or we'll both be undone."

She fought to breathe. "Yes," she said, trying to be brave. "I'm particularly afraid of rats, or blenders or garbage disposals going off unexpectedly while my hands are in them. Just in case you need inspiration."

"You make fear your ally," he said gravely. "I'm sorry about setting the Cleaners on you," pinpointing the origin of some of her fears with expert ease, "But you'd made me very angry and I found it difficult in those days to keep my temper."

"Please," she said. "Please, do it. Just do it. Hurry!"

He reached out his hand to her, and she took it, instinctively with her left hand. The filigree and ribbons of her favour tightened on her arm, seemed to turn into hot molten metal that burned deep into her flesh. The little silver-white leaves turned sharp and whirling and buried themselves in her skin, spurting blood, flaying flesh. She cried out in agony and fell to her knees, but didn't let go of his hand. She wanted to tear the silver shackle, the beautiful torture device, from her wrist. A third part of her pain was the knowledge that she could do this, rip it away, and the pain would be over. But so would her quest, and maybe even her life. So she bit down hard, on her tongue, and kept her eyes on him.

"Does it hurt?" he asked kindly.

"Yes!" she screamed.

"Wake up," he said. "Wake up and remember this is in your other hand." He gave her his sword. "What is your first weapon, Sarah?"

_My will is as strong as yours, and my kingdom is as great. My will is as strong and my kingdom as great. My will, my kingdom. My will is to feel the pain and wake. My will._ "My will!" she screamed. "Strong as yours!"

"And what will you tell the worm?"

_My love, my love for Jareth is stronger than your desire to bind him._ "End you!" she cried, with the last of her strength. "You have no power over me!" It was the last defiant call of a wild creature abused past all endurance, but refusing to die. _The pain! Jareth!_

"Enough!" he cried, as if he felt her pain in his own body. "Wake up, Sarah! Wake up!"

She opened her eyes. The worm was there, twined all about the room, thumping its pink coils against the walls with rhythmic pleasure. It had broken through a window, and the stinking smog of the junkyard filled the room. Broken bits and pieces of her belongings were scattered everywhere. She could hear Yimmil's muffled screams, but couldn't see him.

The wet mouth of the beast was halfway up her arm, sucking at her, grinding the bones of her wrist, and her favour, in the moist coils of its throat. She shrieked in disgust and pulled her arm wetly free. Her arm, her fingers, her favour—all intact. And she raised her sword-arm and brought it down on those rotted, smooth, glistening bends. She saw a fat bulge, like the lump in a python's belly that encompassed a rat, and raged. "Yimmil!" she screamed, cutting a length of coil. "How dare you eat Yimmil!" The pink entrails bled out blue medicinal compounds and pus, bits and pieces of her things, and disgorged Yimmil, who scrambled free and screeched and cussed at the monster.

She hacked at it again and again, moving from its end toward its source. The severed pieces of the worm vomited larger chunks that she couldn't bear to look at too closely for fear of recognizing someone. Again and again she sliced it, cutting it up into smaller and smaller parts, until she found its root, its terminus, slunk down and hiding in the lowest corner of her bookshelf. The worm, Leviathan, ended in a human head without a jaw, bound in wire, glassy-eyed and yet somehow full of a hateful intelligence. It flickered those pale eyes at her, and the last of its horrible wet trunk, inset deep in its skull, gave out a moan.

"I don't know what you are, or were," Sarah said. "But you're finished. Over!"

"Tyto Albans," the worm moaned.

"No," she said. "Jareth, Goblin King. Best of all the fae. And you have no power over him." She buried the sword in the skull, which split in two dry and ashy pieces.

* * *

Sarah moved in slow-motion, in shock, picking up Yimmil and getting them both into the shower, rinsing away the filth of the dead worm. She dressed herself again in her travelling clothes, zipping up her green jacket and holstering her gun with wooden hands. She slung on her bag—by some terrifically great piece of good fortune, it had escaped being smeared with blue effluvia, tucked under her table—and patted the top for Yimmil, who was able to sit there and hold her hair for balance.

"We go now, Yes-Ma'am-Lady?"

"Yes. In just a moment." Sarah reached into the cupboards and pulled out two bottles of cooking oil. She worked carefully, spreading their contents around the room as carefully as she'd spread the salt. She turned on both burners of the stove and cauterized the repulsive remains of worm-blood from the Goblin King's sword, and then left them lit as she went out the door. She touched the red-hot tip of the metal to the cooking oil just at the threshold, and saw it catch, burning white and hot.

Sarah stood back. She watched the memory of her favorite place burn. _But the worm goes with it_ , she thought, waking up slightly. _That's something. That's worth the price_. The heap of junk that had hidden her lost and loved home fell in with a whoosh of air and flame after one quarter of an hour.

"Where we go now, Yes-Ma'am-Lady?" Yimmil asked.

"Out," she said, hefting the Good Knight's sword over her shoulder. "We're going out. Unless you want me to take you home."

"I stay with Yes-Ma'am-Lady," Yimmil said with certainty.

"Okay." A cluster of the junk-covered locals had come to watch the fire and were now blocking her path.

"Where do you think you're going, human woman?" barked one, in a familiar feminine voice. Same yellowed grey hair, same clever ancient wringing hands. Sarah knew her. This was the goblin woman who'd tried to bind all her junk to her back, so long ago. Not that long ago.

"Get out of my way," Sarah hissed. "You've got nothing I want." When the junk lady showed no sign of moving, Sarah stabbed the sword through the pile on her back and heard hidden possessions shatter and break. The goblin woman squawked and wrung her hands, but made way for her. The crowd of her peers did the same, with hobbling camel's gait. They parted before her like the Red Sea before Moses.

"Goodbye, Agnes!" Yimmil screeched to them. "We is going to find King!"

 

* * *

**_Next…Chapter 8: "The King of Cups, Reversed"_ **


	8. The King of Cups, Reversed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Soundtrack for Chapter 8
> 
> "Love is the Drug" -Sucker Punch soundtrack. Perf. Oscar Isaac and Carla Gugino  
> "mOBSCENE" - Marilyn Manson  
> "Let's Dance" -David Bowie

**The King of Cups, Reversed**

* * *

  


The junkyard was an hour behind them now; the mounds and piles of glittering, seductive trash had become smaller and smaller until they'd become patches of shadowy objects, and then nothing. Behind her, she could see the haunting silhouettes cast by the fires. Before her was utter blackness.

She paused to rummage in her bag for her tiny flashlight and pointed it toward her feet. Yimmil took the opportunity to get off her shoulders and walk and skip around her. The tiny arc of man-made light was just enough to see the path by, but Yimmil didn't seem to mind the dark. _Goblins_ , she thought blearily. _Night creatures. Lucky things_. As she walked, she sometimes had to pause as tremors and shakes overcame her. The fear and the pain of her dream, and the horrid reality of the worm's death, worked through her flesh. She realized she was both exhausted and hungry, having foregone more than a half-hour's sleep and all dinner. The ground felt bouncy under her feet, but whether because it really was that way or because she was so tired, she didn't know. The sword was a heavy weight on her shoulder, making everything worse.

She left the tenuous path she was on and leaned against a tree. She couldn't see any sign of dawn coming. She was just going to get lost if she kept going. "Yimmil," she said. He came scampering back to the dim light and looked at her. "I've got to rest. Can you wake me up if…" she couldn't finish the thought. There were too many unpleasant possibilities. "Just wake me up if anyone comes."

"Yes-Ma'am-Lady," he said.

_Try to sleep_ , she thought, tucking her tired body between the comforting thick roots of the tree. She kept the sword close at hand, and felt the gun at her hip. _Try not to think. Dawn will be here soon. Think when the light returns._ She clicked her flashlight off.

_So quiet_ , she thought.

In the darkness, his voice whispered to her, as if coming from a great distance.

"Do you understand why I care for you?" She saw a bright light hovering in the darkness, and the shadow of Jareth, clutching at it, holding the vibrating orb tight in his hands. "Do you understand why you're precious to me? Every human soul is an architect, of flesh and imagination. You can do what the fae cannot. You have vitality. You have choice. Everything you touched in the Labyrinth, even with your eyes, took on a new color, a vibrant reality. You gave it depth and substance. You reminded me of what I'd forgotten."

"What is that in your hands?" she asked.

"You know very well what it is, " his echoing voice proclaimed. "It's a trap, an oubliette. And I can't hold it in check much longer."

_The dream-dance_ , she thought. _My romantic Cinderella fantasy_. The memory of the bauble-ballroom, the Crystal Ballroom, was somehow fused in her memory with her desire for the Goblin King. She took a step closer to the shadowed figure in the gloom.

"Stop!" he said, the strain in his voice obvious. She heard him make a sound that was a muttered curse. "This is an old magic that I set loose on you, when you were first here. I used it as a weapon against you. And now I can't control what I set in motion. It came from me, and I'm the least of my kind, lacquered with the worst of yours."

She was surprised to hear such deep bitterness in his tone. _He actually believes that?_ she thought. _That can't be true. He's tried to protect me. He cares for me. He admitted that._

"I'm fond of you the way a glutton is fond of his meal!" he shouted at her, but she was ignoring him now. She could see the flicker of colors and light inside the crystal. Jareth's feet skidded across the ground, closer to her, and now he was cupping the crystal tight in both hands, restraining something that she couldn't see.

She took another step forward. She found she couldn't see his face clearly; the light in the crystal was too bright, too vibrant. "It's all right," she whispered. The flickering colors beckoned her. She reached out her hand, straining to touch them. "Don't you see? For me, time is running in reverse. The way forward is the way back. Before the junkyard, there was the dance. This is supposed to happen."

"I need you in the Labyrinth, not in the fairy ring!" Jareth panted. The orb dragged him forward. She could see him more clearly now, all the muscles of his arms and neck straining against the pull of the crystal in his hands.

"Let it go," she murmured, taking another step closer. The brilliant crystal escaped him at last, came hovering toward her. "I'm not afraid."

"I am!" His voice seemed to float further away, as if she were the surface of the water, the orb were a bubble of air, and he were a stone, sinking. "Remember," he called out, voice becoming faint. "Remember the rules that bind our people in thrall to one another. Eat nothing. Drink nothing. And safeguard your name!" And then his voice was gone, and there was only the sound of the music of the sphere, the dream, the crystal, which floated close to her, showing her the beauty of its depths.

_"Sarah,"_ she heard him call. _"Sarah!"_

* * *

She was there, a mirror of herself, wearing a red silk so fine it became pink in places against her skin. There were red beads across the bodice, their embroidery giving her some fragile modesty, revealing more than they hid. The drapery of her skirt clung to her thighs like a flow of blood, parting in a slit high up on the thigh, a dress for dancing. Black silk stockings, grabbing garters gripping tight to her legs helped finish her ensemble. Red lipstick, red nails, black eyeshadow and mascara seemed to make her eyes into pits of darkness. Her hair was slicked back and so severely pinned at the nape of her neck that she felt it like a physical pain, like Jareth's cruel and angry grip. Her shoes were the color of crimson sin. But there, over her shoulder, across her neck and down to her left wrist was one piece of jewelry, married tight to her flesh, under her dress. It was a twining single glove of silver-white leaves and silver ribbons, interlocked with strands of blond and brown hair. It cascaded, metal and diamond-brilliant, tendriling down to the tips of her fingers. It was her favour, she realized. _What does it mean?  
_  
 _"A pale jewel, open, enclosed within your eyes."_

Her hands trembled as she looked and saw. Now she understood what it was. In her dance, her frightening and strange dance with the Goblin King at the ball, she'd worn something like this in her hair. She'd seen it in the mocking reflective mirrors in the guests' hands, and in the smooth walls of the ballroom's shell, but not remembered it until just now. _Finnvah's favour too_ , she thought. The type of bracelet people used to get at nightclubs, and the wealth of illusory money the Goblin King spent on him. _Our favours are reconstructions or reminders of our party favors, those brief moments in our lives when our attention was focused absolutely and completely upon him._

_Let it take you,_ her mind whispered. _You can't rely on any drug to ease your passage. There's only your will. Let it go. Let go. Go to him._ Her vision blurred, and she felt the crystal enfold her in an embrace that obliterated all thought.

_So beautiful_ , she thought. _I'm beautiful._

"Yes-Ma'am-Lady?" she heard Yimmil say, but far, from a distance. She felt him grabbing at her, tiny goblin claws holding her by the hand tightly as if his tiny personage could keep her with him. "People coming." His voice was slightly frantic. "Where you going?"

A crude clay pin in the shape of a tiny goblin pinched a swath of fabric at her waist, and she was _there_.

Inside, darkness and smoke and mirrors. She wasn't sure when, or where, she had come in. It felt as if she'd always been here. The people ( _the People_ ) were beautiful, shimmering flesh in a dark rainbow of colors. They were beaded, embroidered, jeweled, semitransparent. Every guest wore hokey plastic or rubber caricatures of human faces that sometimes revealed sharp teeth and dangerous eyes. Before, they had been like people masquerading as goblins. Now, they were something else, something much more dangerous; now they were fae masquerading as human. There were terrible configurations of appetites hidden under those masks, things that could be sensed but never clearly seen. They were cold, the ice so cold that a touch seems to burn. And they were beautiful.

It was like some art-deco pastiche, like a Klimt painting, if Klimt had gone through a noir phase. All gilded darkness.

There was a champagne glass in her hands. _Remember_ , she told herself. _You must not eat or drink_. She put it down on one of the scattered tables, where the tiny lamplight defined it in silver and gold, releasing bubbles that cascaded and overflowed the glass with amber and gold beads.

Every breath was perfume. Everywhere was the smell of money, champagne, and sex. She felt giddy. She watched the dancers. Some danced together, and some alone, but every movement they made was a kind of perfection that drugged her. _All fae_ , her mind whispered. _All Gentry. Be careful. Be careful_. When she moved, she knew herself clumsy by comparison, clomping like a stork in her beaded stiletto heels, while every movement they made was like perfect frozen melodies, the music of the jealous spheres. They danced in deep slow pulses from the belly terminating in upthrust hands, arcane hands making strange symbolic gestures which unwound, in jeweled and cufflinked wrists, to the hissing beat of the snare drum and the low thump of the bass.

She strolled slowly around the perimeter, near the bandstand where the full dance orchestra, all in gold suitwaists and gold-painted faces, were teasing out the beginning of the evening's entertainment. She could feel the floor spinning under her feet, but the dancers and the musicians maintained their postures, as if inertia worked by completely different rules for them.

She could feel the illusion pressing at her.

_My name is Sarah Williams,_ she reminded herself, gasping. _My name is Sarah. My name is Sarah._ And there was someone she was looking for. Who was she looking for? _For Sarah. My name is Sarah._

Hadn't she been here before? She couldn't remember. But hadn't she? What was the memory? This… this was like a perfect scene from a Golden Age of Hollywood film, something starring Bette Davis or Marlene Dietrich or Rita Hayworth, only with no backstage, no back story, no camera angles to make or avoid, no cameras at all. _Am I in a movie?_ she wondered. But no, she wasn't an actress. She was… who was she? She stared down at her left arm. _Who am I? Oh. Sarah. And I'm looking… looking for the Goblin King. That's what this means. I'm looking for Jareth._ She tilted her arm back and forth in the chiaroscuro light, watching her silver lace glove twinkle and sparkle.

She followed the fractured light over her wrist and upon the dancers, admiring the assembled throng dancing the waltz and the tango and the Lindy Hop and stranger and more subtle dances in languid slow-motion, as if there were no time to worry about wasting at all. She realized there was a tiny bone-china dish in her hand with a selection of hors d'oeuvres and petit-four arranged in the shape of flowers.

_Thou shalt not eat._ She put it down on another nearby table and watched in fascination as the plate seemed to bloom in a cascade of sugared violet petals and tiny waterfowl.

There were mirrored columns that stretched upward into the infinity of the heavens, columns which caught the dancers and the dim electric light in scintillations bright as fireworks. She smelled incense and the sweet ache of desire in the air. There, in the center, was a parquet dancefloor, a raised dais, a pavilion red as blood, dark as shadow. She approached closer, picking her way through the dancers and the lovers at their scattered tables. A ghost light on that empty stage burned in that darkness, a light that gave no light. The light was... Her mouth opened, foolishly, seeing _him_.

He was wearing white, blazing white, a white that devoured and reflected all the colors and light of the guests and the party. A white suit, white tie, black shirt, black gloves, and a white leather trenchcoat with white-blue neon and white-sequined starbursts sewn into his shoulders and cuffs like tongues of ice-fire. He was looking at her from a knot of worshipping men and women, masked faces all wearing expressions of covetous possession. His long hair was bound back over his brow in a bronze chaplet of tiny bones and broken bird's wings. _Jareth_ , her heart called out. _Jareth!_ She moved toward him and tripped on her heels, catching herself against a table. When she looked for him again, he was gone.

_Him, she thought. He is what I must have._ She smiled, caught her reflection in one of the pillars. Her smile was red, predatory, certain. It was a knowing smile that was reflected in the false faces of all the beautiful men and women at the party. She stood, and waited, watching. _Come to me. Come closer. I want you. I want you and no other._

He joined the dancers, standing out among them like a star in a black sky. First one partner, then another. All of them, the men and the women both, stroked and caught at him with light hands that demanded nothing but to touch him. She saw how he was desired. She saw how he was adored. He flickered among the dancers like the moon in a vast sunset cloudbank, disappearing only to reappear, his eyes like two stars, one blue as frozen hell, one black as the sea at night.

_Flame, come to moth. Let me fold you up in my red silk, white flame. Come closer to me now._

She hadn't realized she was holding her breath until she felt his presence behind her.

"I see you," he murmured, voice husky with desire and haughty with distance. "I see you… watching them." His hands pressed hard over her shoulders, pulling them back, down her arms, running his fingers like hard rain down her flesh. And oh, his touch was cold. It sent shivers through her. His hands folded over hers, tangled with them, gripped them and drew them up her body, crossed over her breast, holding her, having her hold herself, feeling her own warmth reflected back against her.

"I see you," he said, running his breath over her neck and against her ear. "I see you… watching me." She gasped for air and felt it like knives in the back of her throat, saw her breath mist like a scream in November. A corner of mirrored column caught and held their reflection in its face. His whiteness defined her redness, like the spoor of a predator's kill in the snow. He stared at her through their reflection and caught her gaze. "Wild creature, little doe," he said. "What are you watching for?" He arched his back, holding her, and she surrendered to him, let him catch her, move against her, move her body against his in a slow swaying rhythm. "Wild creature, little deer, don't watch. Dance. Dance with me."

"Yes," she said, swooning. The perfume of the room was him. The core of the fruit, the jewel in the lotus. She swayed with him slowly. His hand traveled down her thigh, burning her through his black gloves, her red skirt. She found herself trembling and weak in his arms, heart racing to feel his immodest, inhuman touch against her garter, and unwilling to stop him. He held her close against him, and she could feel him against the length of her body, icy-sweet and cold but for a core of heat that first repulsed and then fascinated her.

She tried to choke out some sort of protest, tried to break away, but he twirled her out to the length of their arms, and ricocheted her to him with a crash that dug her sequin-covered bodice into her breasts and made the breath leave her body. Her hands clung to his shoulders, lest she fall, and struggled to breathe with her forehead pressed against his lapel. He tilted her face up to his with two black-gloved fingers.

"Who are you?" he asked, and his other glove came hot against her back, her backless dress, a keyhole slot that he ruthlessly exploited, tracing his fingertips over her shoulderblades, over her neck, over her arm, over her favour.

He sang to her, low.

_Oh, I am damned_ , she thought, delirious at the sound of his voice.

_Graven with diamonds in letters plain,_  
There is written her fair neck round about,  
'Noli me tangere, for Caesar's I am,  
And wild for to hold, though I seem tame.' 

"Where is your Caesar, little hind? Where is the one who wrapped his love-token round you yet left you here alone? Or are you a gift? Are you for me?"

"Who are _you?"_ she breathed, arching backward, pressing away from him with all the strength her arms could give. "Why aren't you masked?" He let her fold away from him, but their hips were still joined together, and his hands were there, tyrannically tight, at her waist. He let her fall backward, arching away from him, but unable to escape. His hands slid underneath her back, cradling her, bringing her back, running over her arms, and then he was dragging her upright, hands first around her wrists and then knotted against her knuckles, lifting her up, up, higher, so her shoulders strained in their sockets and only the toes of her ruby-red slippers touched the ground. Her face fell against her breast in the classic pose of submission.

"I?" He set her back down and manipulated her across the dancefloor, with a sure strong lead. The tango was a dance of desire and repulsion, and every time it seemed as though she might get free, he brought her in close again. "I haven't decided on a mask yet. But there are several here who have."

How long had they danced? They circled around and around each other, and she looked over her shoulder, and his, as he pointed out various masked figures. "There is La Belle Dame Sans Merci, also known as Femme Fatale, with her daughter Maggie-May Mrs. Robinson Cougar. And over there is Jack-the-Rascal, and Prince Charming, also known as Ken, with his consort Barbie. And there's her sister Pornstar, and Dracula Dance-Away-Lover, the Incubus." But whether he was giving actual names or the names of costumes, she couldn't tell. "I think I might like to wear the mask of the Rock God, someday. Someday soon."

"Or Goblin King," she said. He was leading her up the steps to the pavilion, lowering her aching body to the soft white recurved couch that seemed to be his place of honor.

"Goblin King?" he asked inquisitively, wrapping one arm around her shoulders, like a hostage-taker, or a lover. His other hand stroked her knee. She found it difficult to think. "What a repulsive notion. Do I look like a goblin? One of those low clay creatures?"

"No," she whispered. "You're no goblin. You're … fae."

"And you have no idea what that really means," he murmured to her, stroking his gloves down her face. "You mortals, you think fae are sweet little winged creatures, little benevolent darlings who grant wishes to the pure of heart. I am holding this fete to prove all of you wrong. This is the anodyne for cute. This is the antidote to adorable. This experience is for your edification." He displayed the crowd to her with a languid wave of his hand. "This is where we satisfy our appetites, and you satisfy your curiosity. This is a dance in the fairy ring."

She looked out onto the floor. The mirrored columns reflected the pageant happening there. She saw small entr'actes being performed between the masked players and the singular central figures with naked faces. A young man with antlers was chased and pulled down by a kirtled huntress and her dogs. A beautiful girl was enfolded in a batwing cloak and drained of blood. A saint was tied to the executioner's stake and burned alive. A woman slowly strangled a hero in the long coils of her hair. All of the props were obvious: the antlers were made of papier-mache, the fire was only light and shadow. But when these glittering pageants of mythic dissolution were each over, there was no more sign of the unmasked protagonists to be seen.

When his hands weren't occupied with loudly applauding each symbolic immolation, he kept them full, stroking her shoulder, trailing his fingers threateningly high into the hem of her sleeveless bodice, and advancing slowly over her knee up the inner curve of her thigh. Or he would press her face out to force her to watch the entertainments with him, the masques of destruction and desire and consumption which frightened and excited her. _This is what Persephone must have felt like_ , she thought, _Sitting upon her obsidian throne, watching the parade of the damned with her ardent bridegroom close beside her_.

As if he could read her thoughts, or her desires, or as if he were intent on acting out his own symbolic rite, he took a pomegranate from a golden bowl offered by a gold-painted servant. Slicing it lengthwise with a sickle-shaped knife, he tilted the opened fruit into her empty hand. The red juice of the broken pips spread over her fingers like blood. A servant poured a champagne the color of hellebore into his glass. He touched her lower lip with his gloved fingertip, stroking down, smearing her lipstick over her chin, opening her mouth. He touched the rim of his glass to her parted lips.

"Eat with me," he murmured. "Drink with me." She shook her head slowly, as if underwater, but her eyes stayed locked on his. "Stay with me," he entreated her. "For I want you. I want to devour your heart with a sauce made of your tears, and turn your emerald eyes into jewels set in gold. I want to take all of you apart." His voice was so gentle, so terrifying. "I want to eat you. I want to hurt you. I want to fuck you." His eyes transfixed her. "Give yourself to _me_ , mortal woman, and I will show you pleasures you've only imagined," he coaxed darkly, tilting the glass up. Her throat was open, and dry as sand. His smile was very, very cruel. "Drink."

In the moment before she would have drowned in his eyes and his words and his profane liquour, a stranger approached their paired couch and bowed gracefully before them, one long leg stretched out before him, the other bent back low at a dancer's angle. "Most Dread Host of the Revel," the stranger said. "I offer you greetings."

"Finnvah," Sarah gasped, and choked, the unswallowed sip of green champagne trickling out of the corner of her mouth.

* * *

  


_**Next… Chapter 9: "The Knight of Swords"** _


	9. The Knight of Swords

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Soundtrack for Chapter 9:
> 
> "Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered"—Sinead O'Connor  
> "Taste in Men"—Placebo  
> "Burn"—The Cure, The Crow Soundtrack

**The Knight of Swords**

* * *

  


She stared at Finnvah. In comparison with all the other guests, he cut a shabby figure in his red wool coat and stained cargo pants, but he wore his homely garb with ease and grace. He had a mask that was nothing but a strip of black fabric with eyeholes roughly gouged out. _Finnvarrah_ , she thought. _Help me_.

But he wasn't paying any attention to her. He had eyes only for the one beside her.

"You," Jareth said coldly, "have interrupted my play." He tossed the wasted champagne-glass at Finnvah's dull boots, where it shattered. Crawling caterpillars and tender green shoots bloomed there. His grip on Sarah's neck tightened possessively. Sarah glanced at Finnvah, and beyond him, at the gathered Gentry. They had been watching Jareth toy with her, the way they had watched all the other rites of defilement and predation provided at the dance. Her face flushed with embarrassment. She was only part of their entertainment.

"Still…" a tilt of the head, "You are interesting. Approach," Jareth commanded Finnvah. "Let me see you." Finnvah came up the steps, slowly, as if drawn by an invisible cord. He stood in front of them. "Kneel," said Jareth, stretching out his hand.

"Inexorable one," Finnvah said, with the hurried manner of a schoolboy trying to deliver a recitation before he can forget it, "I have come to-"

"Kneel." Jareth pressed his hand down, the subtle gesture of his fingers very like the obscure configurations of the fae dancers. Finn's knees trembled and he gasped, coming down to rest on one knee, his eyes all for the man in white. "Good. That's better."

Sarah's tongue burned with the taste of the champagne she'd spit out. She had planned to run away from her keeper, this Jareth whose hand was so strong, and so cold on her, while he was distracted, but she found she couldn't move. And it wasn't his touch on her body, and it wasn't a spell on her… she was only captivated by the spectacle of watching Jareth seduce his prey.

Jareth reached forward to the back of Finnvah's neck and drew loose the knot of his mask. "You'll find better welcome here, young one, if you were properly dressed. Isn't it so?"

"No," Finnvah whispered, but the breath sounded like _yes_. Clutching the fabric over his brow, Jareth drew the mask off and down his face. As he touched him, Finnvah was transformed. The mask became black molded plastic, which first covered and then disclosed his eyes. His lids were painted with gilt and kohl, his hair was powdered in gold dust so thick that it coated his horns and made the crown of his head into a halo. In a burst of glitter, his shabby clothes changed into the gauzy dark blue silks of a pasha's catamite, vest and pants that seemed to reveal more than they covered. But his favour was still there, on his arm, a netted cage of gold ribbons and rosettes of the same poison-green as the champagne. "Better," said Jareth, stroking his face and Finnvah bent to his hand, captured by that touch. "Little one, you could be one of us. Can anything in the mortal world compare? Take joy in what you are. Take what you want from mortal women, mortal men. This is your birthright. Leave your heart behind. Your heart is a snare. Stay with _us_."

Finnvah's eyes glowed gold as his hair and his favour, and Sarah thought she could see his soul being drawn out through his eyes, discarded as easily as his mask. She made a sound of protest, which became a sound of pain as Jareth's hand tightened on her, cutting off the blood to her brain, making her see spots.

It was a small sound, but it was enough. Finnvah's eyes flickered to her, and she felt the full force of his heat, his power. She saw beneath his skin, saw what he might be, without his humanity. He would be terrible, and beautiful. And then Finn's eyes were gentle, human, recognizing her, remembering himself.

"No," he said, drawing away. "Terrifying Lord, no." He stood up, and was wearing his own clothing again. "This may be your domain, but I serve one greater than you. And it's by his command that I've come, and by his command that I will leave again."

"I don't care for your tone," Jareth stood, dragging Sarah up beside him. The pomegranate fell from her hand, shell down, and trundled away like a giant golden-red pill-bug.

"And the lord I serve despises dishonest dealings in nearly equal measure." Finnvah smiled, with some effort. "I came to collect a certain piece of property who has wandered here, expressly against his will, not to kiss your ring or other places less savory." He pointed at Sarah, keeping his eyes on Jareth, his expression coldly accusatory. "That baggage you've trifled with is the rightful property of the King of the Labyrinth. I've come to take her back to him."

The Lord of the Revels laughed, the skin of his face pulling back so that Sarah thought she could see a grinning skull. "King of the Labyrinth? What nonsense." He paused, and manipulated Sarah's neck so that she sprawled at his feet. "The Labyrinth is no kingdom. It's only a door, full of trash and trouble."

"You might be surprised, Fearsome Sir, of what transpires Above and Below while you and the Gentry disport with your victims."

"Would I?" A lip snarled in disdain. "I wonder."

Finnvah flicked back his coat from his hip, revealing his iron sword, keeping it in reach, and extended a hand to Sarah. "Come with me," he said. "I don't belong to this one, and neither do you." Jareth's fingers scraped over Sarah's hair, petting her like a restive dog. And she was like a dog. She clung to Jareth's white trousers, afraid to take Finnvah's outstretched hand.

"Come on now," Finnvah said coaxingly, the way one spoke to a frightened animal. "Come with me. You can't stay here. And he can't hurt you, unless you let him."

She met his eyes, finally, full of warning sympathy. And he took his hand and tapped it meaningfully over his breastbone.

She stared up at Jareth, and then back at Finnvah. He tapped his chest again. Suddenly she understood. No amulet. There were two pieces of regalia she'd never seen the Goblin King without—his gloves, and his amulet. This wasn't him. This wasn't Jareth. _It couldn't be. Could it?_

It might not have been much, but that small bit of doubt freed Sarah. She reached out and took Finnvah's hand.

He pulled her up, wrapped a warm arm around her and led her away. She couldn't help looking over her shoulder at the white-clad fae man behind her. His face was full of regret…and hunger, his eyes deep pits that burned into her. Once again she could imagine a horrible skull just under the skin, grinning and beckoning to her.

She stumbled on the steps, wanting to run, but Finnvah restrained her. He kept his arm around her, forcing her to move slowly. "Don't run," he said quietly. "You must never run from anything immortal. It only attracts their attention." She could feel him trembling. He was as frightened as she was. "Did you eat anything? Drink anything? Accept any gifts?" His voice was anxious, and he kept his head up, constantly scanning the room, cutting through the dancers who attempted to block their way. No one attempted to touch them, though. _It's the iron sword_ , she thought. _Like a talisman, or a force-field._

"No. Where are we?" she asked, voice quavering. "What is this place?"

"It's a faerie ring," he said. "A party for the Gentry. A part of Faerie. It's not so much a place as a state of mind. Or not so much a state of mind as it is a dodgeball cannon."

"What?"

"Never mind." He changed course through the crowd. "It's all glamour and teeth. Mortals come here and get eaten. You've been here three days at least. Maybe longer. _He_ sent me to find you."

_Three days?_ Sarah swallowed nervously, trying very hard not to search the room for a familiar glimpse of white. "Who…who was that?" Sarah finally managed to ask. It seemed as though the party had gotten larger, much larger. It seemed to take ages to cross the floor she had crossed in only moments with her now-unknown dance partner.

"I don't know," Finnvah said. "But it wasn't him. Maybe a doppleganger, or a reflection, or some sort of aspect or shade of him. But it wasn't him. It couldn't be." But whether Finn truly knew, or if he was attempting to convince himself, Sarah wasn't certain. "He'd never ravish you for entertainment," Finnvah said more confidently.

He darted a quick glance down to Sarah, and she saw him lose that confidence. "Unless you wanted him to." There was equal parts query and accusation in his tone, especially since Sarah couldn't find the strength to lie or defend her actions. "Gods Above and Below, you pretty idiot. Half of this is your fault. The Gentry have appetites, but they only borrow the will to satisfy themselves. And you've lent them all plenty of willpower and artistic rapine." He navigated them through a tight cluster of masked figures dressing themselves in scarves made of human hair, human skin. "Love your décor, though. You've definitely got a gift for stage dressing." He paused, keeping their backs against one of the mirrored columns, as he stood on tiptoe to get his bearings over the assembled throng, and as he did, Sarah caught sight of one of the many entertainments in the room.

A human man, so skinny his ribs were exposed, was bound to the torturer's wheel, and spun in lazy circles. The Gentry raked their sharp nails over his naked flesh, drawing ghoulish designs in blood and spit as he cried out in agony and ecstasy, his face contorting between rapture and pain. Sarah hid her face in her hands and wept.

"Oh. Hey now. Don't do that." Finn plucked a napkin from a nearby table and scrubbed her hands clean and daubed at her running mascara and smeared lipstick. "Sorry. Your line was supposed to be, 'Fuck _you_ very much, Finnvah, you were two seconds away from giving him a lap-dance,' and then you'd scowl and be mad instead of afraid." He held the napkin to her nose, reminding her of what her father had done when she was a child. "Blow. I don't want you using my clothes for Kleenex again."

She did, and he tossed the napkin back to the table. "That'll be a fine Mandylion for whoever picks it up next," Finn said with satisfaction.

"How much trouble are we in?" Sarah asked, feeling better, the way she always did after the brief storms of her tears.

"Mmm, I'd say it's pretty bad, but I've been in tighter scrapes than this. We'll be okay. Can you walk? Come on." He tugged her through the crowd again.

"What are they?" Sarah asked, walking as quickly as she could without running. "Finnvah, what are the Gentry really?"

"At the Red Branch, we call them God's Second Breath. He breathed once into the clay of mankind, wakening them to life. But not all of that breath was used up in their creation. The extra became the fae." He pursed his lips. "That's only one story. From what I've observed, humanity is flesh and soul, but the fae are like air and fire. You can feel the wind when it hurtles against you, and feel the fire when it burns you, but there's no core of substance to it. They are fire, and fire always needs fuel." They crept slowly around a gathering of Gentry who were participating in one of the pageants. Sarah tried to close her ears to the sound of a weak human voice pleading for mercy in one breath and begging for more with another.

"But the King of the Labyrinth is different," Sarah reminded him, hopefully.

"Oh yes," but his voice held a touch of doubt. "There's some sort of touch of humanity in him. Rare, but not unheard-of. Sometimes the Gentry are constructed that way, and sometimes I suppose they get a little mutated or defiled in the process of coming to be."

"Born that way?" Sarah asked.

"Never born, and never dying. They bleed and blend into one another, immortal, dissolving down into their component pieces and arising again fresh and renewed. Like… archetypes, or classic characters. Like the phoenix. Never born, never dying, but constantly changing. And humanity is just fuel for their fire, or a vacuum which their nature rushes to fill."

"Demons," Sarah whispered with a shudder, remembering the feel of cold, hard hands on her body.

"Sometimes, yes, I wouldn't be surprised. Maybe the host of this party is just a broken-off bit of our King's essential nature. Connected, related, reflected, but not the same at all. There must be some rule about the fae meeting themselves, or he would have come here to fetch you out." He gave her a significant look. "He was worried when he couldn't find you."

"I was stupid," Sarah said sadly. "He told me it was a trap, but I didn't listen. I just wanted to be with him. Stupid."

"Well, I was stupid to let you go off alone," he said grimly. "But I, unlike certain other people—" he scanned the room again on tiptoe, and picked a new direction, "— _listen_ when someone says no." He smiled impudently at her. "And speaking of other stupid choices-I got to the Bog of Eternal Stench last night and was dumb enough to light a match." His smile became a grin. "Almost singed my eyebrows off. Hoo-wee, what a fireball!"

She laughed, and the fae guests, with their terrifying masks and faces, backed away, as if her laughter were a gross violation of propriety. Sarah scrutinized them, making faces under their false faces, and laughed harder. Finnvah joined her. "So do you have any suggestions as to how to get out of here?" he asked.

"When I was here, before, I found the outer wall and ran a chair through it. It got the job done." She bit her lower lip and examined the room, and caught the gaze of sheer admiration Finnvah gave her in a reflection. "But there aren't any edges here," she whined, but was too tired to change her tone. "It just goes on and on!" Sarah said. "One way to get out of a fairy ring is to have someone stand just outside, and reach in and pull the trapped dancer out. Is that what you're doing?"

"Point to you, Sarah," said Finnvah. "You know your lore better than Gary Gygax."

"So pull already!" Sarah said.

"I don't know where I came in!" he said. "How can I pull you out through the ring if I can't figure out where the ring ends? This is your fantasy. Are there any borders at all? Do you really want to leave?"

"I didn't before, but I do now." She paused, eyes focusing on a possible escape route. The columns and the chandeliers glimmered and flashed, hung low. She pointed. "The only wall I can see is the floor or the roof. Can we climb out? Up the columns?"

"I don't think much of your chances there. In your shoes, you'd never get a good grip. Without them, your feet would get slashed to bacon. Unless…" He peeked up and over the crowd again. Sarah followed his gaze and groaned. "No way," she said.

"Unless you have a better option," Finnvah said grimly. They stared at the same thing, the velvet draperies of the pavilion, the gabled roof that seemed to terminate in the darkness "Okay," she said, taking a deep breath. "We'll climb it."

"No," said Finnvah. " _You_ will. I'll need to distract _him_."

"I'm not going to leave you alone again," Sarah said. "I won't, Finnvah."

"There's the contrary brat I like so much," Finnvah said merrily. "But you will, and I'll tell you why. The membrane that encloses this place is permeable. And I'm a halfway person and only halfway here. It's much easier for me to leave alone than when I'm lugging your weight. And I've got my Cold Iron with me." His eyes flashed golden at her. "You'll do it," he said. "I'll be right behind you. And turnabout being fair play," he said, and kissed her lips gently. "Don't argue." He gave her a smack on the butt, which made her yelp. "Get going."

She pushed through the crowd alone. Hands clutched at her and slid away again, drawn back instead to the pageants in which they participated. She expected, at any moment, for the Gentry to thrust her in the middle of a circle, to make her once more the center of their rapacious attention. But then they stopped grabbing at her, and instead turned their sight beyond her. She cast a glance backward. Finnvah had drawn his sword. It glowed white-blue in the oppressive and beautiful darkness, making light and clarity. The counterpoint to his light was the Host of the Revels, under his canopy of blood.

"You!" She heard Finnvah shout. The crowd opened to let him through. Finn was cutting through the Gordian Knot of Gentry and their victims. His sword sang a song of gleeful mayhem as it sliced through air and shadow. The revelers fled on either side of him, making a ravine of voyeurs. They were hemmed in now, two sides to the defile: the white King and the red Knight. "Come on, you!" Finnvah cried. "Let's see how strong you are against someone who fights back!" The music stuttered for a moment, and came to an abrupt end.

The Host stood. Two gold-painted slaves removed his white coat, his black gloves. His hands were long and sharp and tipped with fingernails like diamond needles, like claws. He seemed all eyes and teeth and grasping and terrifying power. The Lord of the Revels pointed that terrible hand at Finnvah. "As you wish, sub-creature." He advanced on the dark-skinned man in red.

Sarah knew this was the moment. Nobody was watching her now. She moved to the periphery of the crowd. The rest of the space of the dance-hall was empty, and wavered around the edges—the spectacle that captured everyone's attention now was the battle between Finnvah and his antagonist. And although she was walking, remembering Finnvah's advice against running, it only took her a few moments to reach the pavilion. She grabbed a length of velvet curtain in her two hands, and jerked it hard. It seemed to be firmly anchored.

Her skirt was going to be a problem. She folded it up over her waist and tied it there with her sash, hands running briefly over the little clay pin.

_Out_ , she thought. _Out. Up and out_. She focused on her task, grabbed the velvet drape in both hands, and began to climb.

At first it was difficult to get good purchase—the velvet slithered under her fingers, nudged softly between her legs. But her shoes, so impractical for walking, were like climber's crampons, the heels tearing easily through the velvet. After a few difficult and hopeless moments, she scaled the drapery as easily as a cat up a screen door.

She reached the lip of the roof and, like she had in the Escher maze, rolled herself up onto it. She could hear the sounds of fighting below. _Don't look back_ , she told herself. _Don't look back. Only look forward._

But she couldn't help herself. She turned to see, as Orpheus had.

It was a magnificent battle. They were equally matched, the Host of the Revels and the hero in red. Finnvah had length of reach with his sword, and thrust sharp sweeps forward. But his antagonist was faster, sidestepping, bending, arching away from the cold iron sword with a dancer's precision. When Finnvah put his strength into the centrifugal motion of his weapon, his antagonist darted in, raking his claws close, too close, to Finn's vulnerable face and neck. She saw that the back of Finnvah's coat had four diagonal slashes across the back, but if he was bleeding, it didn't show. They careened and separated down the long length of the room, hammer and tongs.

Finnvah wasn't trying to win, she realized. He was just trying to buy time. And, although he seemed sure and strong, she could see that unlike his opponent, he would tire. When that happened, when he couldn't raise his heavy blade again, he would die.

"Jareth!" she screamed. "Stop!"

All eyes turned to her, including his. In that moment, committed to his swing, the tip of Finnvah's blade opened a gash on the fae man's cheek. He cursed at Finnvah in a shrieking, hissing language and held a hand to his bleeding face, a small stream of steam hissing from the wound. Finn was stunned by his unexpected success, staring at his sword in brief shock. A moment before he could press his advantage, his antagonist jumped away, turned to the pavilion, and ran toward her—not in retreat, but with a single-minded purpose of murder gleaming in his eyes, those dark, soulless pits.

_Oh, no_ , Sarah thought, and began to climb the arching roof. _Oh, no. Oh shit_. Her heels slipped and caught on the smooth surface of the black tiles. She felt one of her stockings run and rip, but her naked skin helped her get a better grip as she inch-wormed up.

The ceiling was just above her, the arch of the roof of the fairy ring. She pounded at it with her fist. Its texture was grainy, gritty. She clawed at it with her hands and some of it came pelting down like a shower of dry rain, like clay. Earth. It was made of earth. She used both of her hands to dig, covering herself with dirt, coughing as some of the grit landed in her nose and mouth.

Over the lip of the pavilion, two long-fingered, taloned hands appeared. And then a face, a bleeding face. She dug faster. The loose soil began to pour in like sand through an hourglass. Her fingers were raw and her nails broken painfully off at the quick, but she continued to dig, for her doom was approaching. The Host of the Revels, her dance-partner, was on the roof.

"And where are _you_ going?" he snarled cheerfully. He reached the eaves of the peaked roof and began to climb up to her. "There's nowhere for you to hide from me, mortal woman. There's only the dance. So let's dance. Come let me dance with you!" He reached out and grabbed for her ankle. She stomped down with her other heel, jabbing deep into his wrist, making him let go, taking away one of the weapons in his arsenal.

_The sky is falling_ , she thought idiotically, but the hole she'd dug in the roof was spreading like an avalanche, burying everything below in a snowfall of dirt. She thought she could see moonlight just above. Just above was out, was freedom. But she'd never make it.

"Sarah!" she heard a voice say. "Sarah, grab on!" The moonlight—it was Jareth. The real Jareth.

Two green-gloved hands were extended down to her, out of the cascade of the fairy-ring's burial. She reached up for them, and they seized her by her wrists. The fae creature hissed and cursed at her, and she kicked out at his face, making contact with his chin. His head rocked back, and he slid back down the tiled roof.

The last thing she saw as Jareth lifted her out and away was Finnvah, giving her a saucy salute and jamming his blade into the floorboards. They gaped wide for him, and he jumped down, and through, and out.

* * *

"Shhh, Jareth murmured, plucking her up from the earth like a flower, quieting her panic with his reassuring presence. "Shh. Don't be afraid. I have you."

"Finnvah!" she said, choking on the name, coughing up a flowerbed's worth of dirt. "Yimmil!" She blinked but couldn't see. She'd been buried alive.

"Fine. They're fine. You're all out. All of you, free."

Those words, that voice, should have frightened her after where she'd just been, but they didn't. His embrace was immensely comforting. He was holding her in his arms, carrying her weight against his lap. Unable to help herself, unable to do anything else, she nuzzled into his shoulder. She could smell him, sandalwood and rain. She could feel him, warm and alive. _Don't let me go_ , she thought. _Jareth, don't let me go_.

"Free. And there's no harm done. No harm." A thorn of anxiety in his voice, as if he were trying to reassure himself as much as her. She coughed out more dust, and he brushed more earth out of her hair, shook it out of her clothing. Sarah wiggled her foot. She'd lost a shoe. It seemed a small price to pay. She clung to him, opening her eyes. His coat was green now, faintly luminous, the delicate shade of the firefly's love-note, and his amulet gleamed in the folds of his bruise-colored shirt. He ran his hands over her arms, and she shuddered with the memory of her dance with his double. But he seemed satisfied, after looking in her eyes, that his frightened prediction was accurate—she was unhurt.

But he wasn't. There was a dull pink slash high up on his cheekbone, the scar of an old, old wound.

She froze, looking at him. He tried to brush more dirt from her face but she grabbed his hand.

"Don't," he said, as she tucked her fingers into the fold of his glove cuff, but he made no move to stop her, and his voice was sad. "Don't look."

She kept her eyes open and tugged gently at each finger of his glove. His hand clenched suddenly. She waited until he opened his hand again for her, let her finish the job of peeling the leather away from his skin.

His hand was warm, but it wasn't human. Long-fingered, the ring and middle finger the same length, it was pale and slightly pruned from their encasement in leather. His fingertips ended in talons that seemed to be extensions of his skin. These fingertips were translucently pale as keratin. Not the talons of an owl, or the fingers of a man, but something in-between. These were the claws of a predator, sharp enough to tear flesh, and draw blood. They were the hands of the Inexorable One who also had Jareth's face. They were one and the same.

"Put me down," Sarah whispered. "Let me go, you monster."

* * *

_**Next… Chapter 10: "The King's Body Politic"** _


	10. The King's Body Politic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Soundtrack for Chapter 10
> 
> "The Ubiquitous Mr. Lovegrove" -Dead Can Dance  
> "Sea Legs" -The Shins  
> "Nature Boy" -David Bowie

**The King's Body Politic  
**

* * *

  


"Let me go!" she insisted, struggling away from him.

His face became the cold impersonal mask of the King. "As you wish." He rolled her out of his embrace and took a step back from her as she sprawled on the ground. "It's all one to me." He flexed his inhuman, naked claws, and glanced at his glove tight in her hand, but didn't demand it back. Sarah swayed, dizzily, trying to hold on to a floor that wanted to toss her wide. She could feel the earth under her fingers, could feel more of it gritty against her scalp and, God help her, under her clothes and even in her stupid socks.

Sarah could see the place where she'd emerged. It looked like a declogged drainpipe, full of glittering flotsam and jetsam mixed with loose soil. She lay on her back, and stretched herself out so she didn't have to see him. There was a mural on the ceiling that she could see by the light of his witchfire coat. It was painted and carved into the domed ceiling of this little enclosure of earth and tree-roots: a demon of hell with an owl's face who was presiding over a vast landscape of banqueting-tables and kitchens, where human souls were flayed and stewed and eaten and excreted by the capering and mercurial denizens of the pit, only to begin the process again. There was nothing else but him to see. There was no sky. No moon, no sun, no stars. Everything was a series of interlocked boxes, cages, rooms, and she was here, with the beast.

"The Fairy Ring," Jareth intoned, "Is both the feast and the eater. And when we've eaten the dreams, desires, sensations and images of living mankind, the food can run away, as unharmed as a well-milked cow."

"That's disgusting," Sarah said, angrily. The mural moved under her eyes, and she watched the pale souls boiling in their cook-pots.

"You want to use the word disgusting?" Jareth snarled, "I could describe the human digestive process in rather horrific detail."

Sarah's mouth skewed and she peeked out from behind her sleeve. "Fair point."

"I," he said, a bit mollified by her response, "created that Fairy Ring when I was much younger. When I was proud and hungry. Part of my essence is there, cut off from my will and myself, luring and eating and consorting with the other fae, existing outside of time, while I languish here. It exists whether I want it to or not. Humanity devise their own temptations, their own preparations and ravishments. They come, and they go."

_Demons_ , she thought grimly. _Parasites. But… more than that_. She had to admit that there was more than that. What demon would give delight and the fulfillment of dreams? And Jareth, as frightening as his pure, fae aspect was—that cruel, devouring, rapacious aspect—had now saved her soul and body twice over. Hadn't he?

"It really wasn't just a peach." Jareth mused as he glanced down at her.

_"It wasn't just a peach._ You tricked me into eating it, and it made some sort of attachment between us, and you've been nibbling at me ever since." She covered her eyes with her arm. The scent of her favour, the scent of him, filled her nose, murmured softly to her spinning mind. Out of the corner of her sleeve, she could see his boots, crocus-purple, buffed to a liquid shine. "You already caught me up in the ring. When I ate the peach. You've been feeding on me for years," she said. She couldn't help but look at her arms and hands, almost expecting to see some proof of her accusation. "Even if you have no power over me?"

"I have all the power over you that you allow," he acknowledged. "And you've allowed me quite a bit."

"So that's why you warned me not to eat. To keep me away from that other you, that other ring. You want me all for yourself, right here." She didn't know how to feel. Part of her was elated to think that he cared enough to want to possess her. The other part was utterly aggrieved with him for failing to secure her explicit consent. She had no doubts now that the "eating" he described was fraught with danger to her soul, or her personality, or her sanity. "How could you, Jareth?"

"Oh, yes, this is all happening to _you_ ," Jareth drawled. "As if it's something I've done to you and not something you _chose_." He stepped away from her and she heard the sound of digging. She moved her arm and watched him paw through the earth, like a man searching for his wedding-ring down a sewer grating. The faces he was making as he touched various things in the earth-spill were funny, but she didn't feel like laughing. He pulled up a bowl of glittering fruit, a clay pin, her shoe, a rope of diamonds, and lastly, a bottle of wine that he uncorked and smelled with relish before shoving the stopper back in. He glanced over at her and she turned abruptly, irritated at having been caught looking.

"I admit," he said, stowing some of his plunder in inner pockets of his green coat—reminding her painfully and regretfully of Finnvah—"That I ate what you provided. There were times when you spread a banquet of sex and beauty before me. You spread a table and you spread your legs. Could I be blamed for being tempted? Did I rape you? Did I bite? No. _Not even when you invited me to._ And instead of being praised for my abstemiousness, you're scolding me like I was a child with his fingers in the jam-jar. That makes me feel rather cross." He glared, eyes burning with intensity. "It's always the same with you, Sarah." Her name sounded like a curse on his lips. "Nothing I do is ever enough for you." The words were cold and chilling, like ice penetrating her skin and she shuddered.

"You're not human," Sarah objected, but she knew she was whining again. And she was lying on her back like a baby exhausted from a tantrum. She was exhausted suddenly, without enough energy to sit up and face this…creature before her.

"To use _le mot juste_ , Sarah, 'Duh.'" He thrust his chest forward and drew the universal sign for "cuckoo" against his temple. "Of course I'm not human," Jareth replied indulgently, like one would to a child. Sarah let her head roll toward him, and he crouched down, _tsking_. "You knew from the beginning that I wasn't a human man. And yet, you've always taken certain things for granted about me." He crossed his arms in a spasm of pique. "Is it my fault that my reality doesn't match your expectations?"

"Well… no," she admitted, "But you've never helped me know you, even a little bit. You're like trying to solve a riddle in a foreign language. You're so obscure. You know more about me than I know about you. You've admitted to watching me. Stalking me." Her voice trembled a little considering the double-meaning of her next words. "Eating me."

"Look at me, Sarah." He reached out to her; his hand was warm on her wrist, making her stand as he did. Her pride refused to try to force the issue, but she was still drawn to her feet. His grip was strong and unbreakable. She knew that now from experience. "Look at me? See me for what I am."

She looked. She took a long look, from his moss-fuzzy pants, still and always pornographically tight, past his ungloved hand, up to the hip-hugging belt of braided leather, past his glow-worm jacket lapels, and to his amulet, gleaming between the folds of his low-wrapped purple shirt. But her eyes wouldn't go higher. Her eyes were drawn to his naked inhuman hand. He offered it to her, palm down, unthreatening, for her inspection.

It wasn't that terrible, really. But now the reality of his physical difference was all intermixed with the dream of the Fairy Ring, and spoiled by the knowledge that he and the Host of the Revels were somehow both the same. If she'd seen this, as a girl, would she have been frightened? Disgusted? Certainly forewarned, and perhaps not so eager to desire the mysterious and sexy Goblin King. But it was only uncanny. Like his strange eyes, it was something that was felt rather than perceived. His gloved hand stroked up her green leather sleeve, grasped her shoulder. She held his green glove between her fists, trying to pull it apart.

"I wish…" he said, raking those fingers up her collar and then across her throat, finally resting them against her lips… "I wish I could promise never to hurt you. But the Labyrinth is a place for attaining wisdom, and pain is the price of knowledge." She felt those talon-barbs prickle her mouth, but he didn't hurt her. His face held hunger, and regret. It was the same expression of the Host of the Revels, who was also Jareth. But here, she felt the weight of the sadness in his eyes, felt the self-discipline of his will. "The Labyrinth is dangerous. You are mortal, and I am King. I am responsible for what happens here, whether I wish to be or not. And I shouldn't..." He compressed his mouth to a thin line, holding back his thought, and drew his hand into a fist against his amulet. "May I have my glove back?"

"I'll trade it for my shoe," Sarah said calmly. Jareth rolled his eyes and picked it up, tapping the dirt out of it. "Allow me," he said, kneeling in front of her. She balanced one hand on his shoulder as he fitted her clog back on her foot. "There, Cinderella." He stood in front of her and handed her the clay pin. "I believe this also belongs to you."

"Thanks," Sarah said, uncertainly. She shoved the pin into her pocket and handed him his glove. Instead of putting it on, he stripped off the other and stuffed the pair into his belt.

He turned his back on her and moved in the utter darkness, until the light of his coat revealed the deep roots of a massive tree. He tapped it once, petting it, and the thick terminal branches spread wide, revealing a narrow flight of twisting impossible wooden stairs, leading up. "This way."

"I want to know," Sarah began, ducking under the lintel of roots, and following him up the steep steps. "I _want_ to know more about you. You owe me that." His coat was torchwood, a dim lamp that gave just enough luminescence to see by.

"And I'm about to show you," Jareth said calmly. "I'm going to try. But it's almost impossible for the fae to give humans answers they'll accept." His voice echoed in the long tunnel of wood. He was silent, but the long upward passageway was a sounding-chamber, reverberating with his words. His coat burned brighter, casting light and shadow on the tunnel's carved and painted wall. There was a story inscribed there. Jareth tripped up the steps light as a bubble, and she had to follow him and look quickly, very quickly, to see the story in the wake of his transient light. There was no writing, but the colored inscriptions had a voice, and that voice was very clear to Sarah.

Once upon a time there was a young fae, just a vague collection of interests and fascinations, who came to this Labyrinth. This creature, shown there in an amorphous state, had the body of an owl and the face of a child. It was a child. It was a faelet, just beginning to take a distinct shape and form. He was most pleased by things that, like himself, weren't one thing nor fully the other. And the Labyrinth was attractive, a middle ground between what was and what could be. The Labyrinth was full of that emptiness that mortals call possibility. The faelet explored and examined the place, making and unmaking, shaping and corroding and building. He flew to peck at and peruse humankind, and then soared down again to the lower depths of the earth beyond known reality, but he always paused in the un-kingdom of the Labyrinth, in the threshold space, to see and to do and _to be_. Before he even realized what had happened, he'd claimed the space as his own, made it an extension of his flickering nascent self.

In the moment between opening and closing his eyes, the faelet became aware that a daunting horde of goblins had taken refuge in his Labyrinth, and were quickly wreaking havoc with all his unfinished dreams and desires. They had laid rough and rude claim to his special place, and had the strength to keep it, being linear and solid where he was chaotic and ephemeral.

The fae child was coming close to the time when he would assume a distinct nature and name, ready to enter his prime, to grow and flourish, to eat and to slide through his rightful prey, humanity. There were two paths laid before him. In one, he came into adulthood as a fae, wearing a mask of... but that path terminated in darkness. In the other, an angel with feet afire, or a demon with three faces, offered him the second path, one rarely taken by his kind. It was a path to the crown. To become strong enough, solid enough to overmaster the goblin horde, he would need to acquire a bit of human strength and vigor. An amulet—his amulet—was hung around his neck and he walked through the fire to become flesh, sacrificing part of his incandescent self. No longer a faelet, no longer between states, he was burned into one mold, bound into distinct shape and form.

Jareth's voice interrupted the narrative. "Goblins are not fae—they are strong and eternal as the earth, and they can't be won over by our power alone, which is all made of the strength of words and thoughts and creation. There's an ancient adulthood ritual a fae may undergo, a rite of passage that allows us to harness the physical strength and singular will of humanity. But it's like unto death. I knew if I could endure it, pay for it, that I'd receive something of equal worth in exchange. What I wanted was the Labyrinth."

She looked and saw. Air became earth. Light became flesh. A fixed body, a fixed perspective. She saw an owl wrapped up in the lengthy coils of a vile worm.

"Several… things happened to me, when I fell up to Earth. But there's only one thing that concerns you, Sarah. The serpent beguiled me, and I ate. And when you came to the Labyrinth, I tried to take out what the worm put into me, and put it into you. Just a touch of that humanity. 'Let her carry it away with her,' I thought. 'Let her go into the Fairy Ring with that inside her, let it all be devoured.' But all you took was a single taste, and the fruit wasn't pure. I had lived with my dual nature too long to separate out that part of myself cleanly. And so you've got a bit of my essence inside you."

"Is that why these dreams are so real?" she asked. She grabbed up the edge of his coat-tails and forced him to walk more slowly. "We _are_ dreaming, right?"

"We have a certain indisputable connection. You experience me very well. And when you've called me, dreaming of me, I've always been compelled to go and see you. I didn't always have the strength to refrain from taking what you offered. The sight of me, reflected in your eyes. The beating of your human heart, the scent of your desire…" His footsteps faltered, and he glanced over his shoulder quickly and then averted his gaze again. "Just a touch. Just a taste. I didn't want to hurt you. Our two races can too easily do harm to the other. I've tried… to show restraint."

Her eyes followed the story of the murals. That touch of humanity, that patina of mortal strength was enough to give the fae man, no longer young and no longer quite fae, the advantage over the goblin hordes. He fought with the combined strength of both races, fought many battles. He destroyed the smartest goblins, the most dangerous ones, and subdued the rest. He charmed them. He beguiled them. He made himself their King. And they drew the hair off his head and hacked it off with terrible scissors, and set him on the Throne of the Goblin King, which was also one of their cunning and cruel devices.

The throne was a cage for a wild bird. The goblins were foul and raucous, and when the Goblin King sat there, he forgot where he had come from. He was theirs. And like cruel and stupid people, they spoiled their king rotten, gave him his own way in everything, bent over backwards to serve him in all ways but the ones that would matter. Meanwhile, the Labyrinth, the very place he'd endured so much to attain, was left ignored, and began to slip into decay…until one day-

Sarah caught one glimpse of an owl observing a girl dressed all in white, carrying a red book. Her mother had given her the white dress, folded the fabric over her little-girl's body, but here she was a womanchild, and the dress was almost too small now.

"You were a creature on the edge. Not a girl, not a woman, and all full of inchoate desires and dreams. And calling out to me with my own words. How could I not watch you? How could I not look at you?"

"You wrote the Red Book? But I thought Jeremy wrote that play. For my mother." She swallowed hard.

"I didn't say I wrote it. I said my words were in it," he replied curtly. "I watched you often. It gave me a feeling-I won't say happiness-to hear those words again. I kept a window open on you. The goblins were interested in you because I was interested. And then you said the _right_ words, and wished your brother away. What was I to do? As the Goblin King, it was my obligation to let them take your little brother and eat him. Baby is a rare dish, rarely found in the Labyrinth. But I had another role I could take on. I could oversee a rite of passage for you. And that is precisely what I did."

He snuffed his firefly coat, and she was enfolded in absolute darkness. "And while I watched you in my Labyrinth, I rediscovered it after long years of neglect. Now you're here again. Do you believe in fate?"

"I believe in coincidence," she said carefully. "Destiny is something we make, not something that's already made. Believing in fate—that's the abdication of responsibility. Saying things are a certain way because of the Will of Heaven or because the Devil made us do it—it's a load. We're responsible for the fates we weave."

"And what fate did you weave?"

"I grew up," Sarah said. "I learned that you have to sacrifice absolutely everything if you really love someone. I chose Toby over you." _The exact opposite of my mother, who sacrificed me for Jeremy, for her career. I grew up the moment I understood why my choice was better. And you were there,_ _Jareth_.

He chuckled in the darkness. "So you don't believe in destiny, or in a higher power? Or in the gods? How adorable. I'll have to repeat this conversation to Shiva. He could use a good laugh."

She blinked. His voice was amused, but she wasn't sure if he was teasing her or not. "I only believe in what I can see!" she insisted.

"And what do you see?" he asked. She felt him reach out to her, and she took his hands, fumbling for them. They were warm hands, living hands, and she let him lead her slowly, and carefully, up several more steps, their footfalls echoing like the drumbeat of two hearts.

"I can't see you at all at the moment," she said bluntly. "But I'm willing to trust you." She stumbled again in the dark, and again he steadied her. "I trust you, Jareth."

"I'm a monster," he reminded her, chiding her with her own words. "Fae but not fae, mortal but not mortal. I always played the villain very well. Are you willing to trust a villain?"

"There's no reason to," Sarah said. "But…the reason I'm here. I didn't come to the Labyrinth because the goblins wanted me," she admitted. She had a lump in her throat. The dance in the Fairy Ring was nothing, nothing compared to this confession. "I came… for you." She held his hands tightly in hers. "I wanted to see you. I want to see you with my waking eyes. I don't believe you're a villain any more. Maybe you never were."

"Even after everything you've already seen?" he mused. "It's dangerous of you to put that much faith in me, Sarah. It's dangerous to have a heart. Dangerous to want. Wanting hurts." He really was inexorable—pulling her along in the dark when what she really wanted were some straight answers. "It's far better to have nothing."

"So why am I here this time? Why these tasks, why a door?"

She heard him sigh in the darkness. "I'm under a curse," he said quietly. "I set a pattern in motion the moment I decided to become the Goblin King. After you left, after some time, I wandered far out into my Kingdom, and I learned something dangerous, woke up an older magic than mine. I'm bound by the confines of this spell, and now the only magic I've left to use is what I can draw from your dreams. I am a prisoner until you come to set me free."

Her feet wobbled on the lip of a step and he steadied her. _Under a spell_ , she thought. _And yet he seems so strong. He's strong because of me. Because I believe in him_. She felt fiercely glad that whatever he'd taken from her had at least not been wasted. She wanted to see his face now, wanted it so badly that at first she thought she was conjuring his face out of memory. But then she knew she was generating her own light, making her favour into a cold flame, making it glow pale and white.

"I want you," she said. "And I know you want me too. The connection goes both ways. It's not just about eating for you. You want me the way a man wants a woman. You want _me_."

"I mustn't," he said sadly. "I _do_ want you, Sarah. And I am ashamed of my monstrous selfishness."

"Please," she said. "Stop moving away from me." But he had come closer, so that they were sharing the same step. The light of her favour reflected the light of his coat, making him burn brighter.

"I'll hurt you," he whispered, but the words weren't the proud invitation of the Host of the Revels, they were a confession. "The fae have no hearts. They cannot love. This will end in tears. I should send you away from me. I should say no."

"Pain is the price of knowledge," she said. "Your words. I'm willing to be hurt, if that's what it takes to be with you." She wrapped her arms around him and rested her head against his breast. His skin felt feverish, twitching with tension. But he returned her embrace, holding her close to him, rubbing his cheek against her hair. His breath was perfume. She could feel his pulse racing, racing against hers. "Please," she said, tilting her face up to him. "Please, if you believe in fate, then you have to believe this was meant to be. Kiss me. Show me you want me back. Kiss me."

His coat brightened so that her pupils burned. She could see how his will was torn in two pieces, between desire and restraint. His talons stroked her face as gently as a man's might, with as little hurt. He was gentle, so gentle, and so cautious. She kept her eyes on him, devouring the sight of him. She wanted to see him.

"Yes," he said quietly.

He bent his face carefully to hers, and just touched her lips. It was a gentle kiss, a child's kiss, his lips innocent against hers. She heard him give a whisper-moan of fear, and then his mouth was firm against hers, demanding and hungry. She could feel appetites in that kiss, and felt his desire for her in all the lines of his body, the body she was melting against. He kissed her with sharp quick darts, like a bird pecking at crumbs. He tasted of raspberries and nicotine, and he was so hungry, so shy… "Yes," she murmured between the hard snaps of his lips against hers. His claws tapped against her scalp.

He breathed against her mouth, and then his tongue, sliding between her lips, was dancing with hers. His kiss burned. It burned and tingled, and she imagined that he was sucking out the taste of faerie champagne from her, drawing poison out of a wound, drinking her. _Drink with me_ , she thought. _Drink me. I trust you. I want you, Jareth. I want you. I want you and no one else_. He was intoxicating to the senses. His hands were on her waist, and then against the curve of her ass, lifting her and pressing her against him. She could feel that core of heat sliding against her legs as she rose in his embrace, but it didn't disgust her, or threaten her. He smelled like desire. The perfume of him tickled her nose and her brain, until she was a censer of sweet incense, burning, burning for him.

It was Jareth who broke the kiss, gasping for breath. He turned his face aside, and she nuzzled against his beardless cheek, sampled his sweat and the drops of their mixed saliva, utterly without shame, without fear. And although he didn't look at her, he also didn't let her go. Those strong hands kept hold of her body as if they'd never let her go.

"There isn't much time," he said slowly, "Before we both wake. _If_ you wake, and regret this decision, you will completely and utterly ruin me." He looked at her again. His smile was sad. "I'm falling. Catch me up again. Kiss me again, Sarah. Kiss me until the light breaks. Tell me you'll come for me on feet like wings."

She wrapped her arms around his neck and took his mouth again. "Yes," she said. "Yes."

"Mortal woman, you'll be the death of me." And then there was only desire and the dark, and the taste of him upon her.

* * *

**End Act I**   
  


* * *

_**Next…Chapter 11: "The Pillars of the Underearth"** _


	11. The Pillars of the Underearth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Soundtrack for Chapter 11
> 
> Subterraneans" -David Bowie  
> "Optimistic" –Radiohead  
> "The Dance" -Tangerine Dream

**Act II  
The Pillars of the Underearth**

  


* * *

Of course, when she woke, it was to disappointment. Her arms were empty, except for her bag, which she'd apparently spent some time kissing, or drooling on, in her sleep. She was lying wedged between two tree-roots, damp and stiff and cold, but there was no telling if this was the same place she'd fallen asleep or if it was someplace else entirely. The bronze sword was hooked into one of the straps; she was lucky she hadn't impaled herself on it.

_Or maybe unlucky_ , she thought, remembering Jareth's kisses. Her body flushed with warming heat. There hadn't been time for anything else, anything more. But their rather intense make-out session left her with little doubt that there would be more in the future. _This isn't helping_ , she thought, pushing amorous daydreams back into the recesses of her mind. _Kissing the Goblin King is really excellent, but it's not what I'm doing right now_. Images of Jareth's past were fresh in her mind, vivid now that she was awake and the temptations of his lips were somewhere else. For a second, she just stayed in the same curled up position, trying to gain her mental balance, and then she moved, standing up on shaky pins-and-needles legs, before she allowed herself to wallow. She was in the rare state of being completely awake and aware, alert to her surroundings, and, through some kind of miracle, not terribly hungry.

The morning light filtered through the lattice of the giant trees, sparkling with pollen and swollen dewdrops, settling as a fine sheen on her clothes, her skin, and clinging to her hair. She jerked her hips from side to side, hating the way her damp jeans clung to her calves. The denim felt like it'd been taken too soon out of a cold dryer, stiff, unmovable, and chilly. Far, far away, she could just make out the golden dome of the Castle-Beyond-The-City rising up out of the perpetual fume of the junkyard. Before her, the ground gave up a gentle mist, spirit-breath that clothed the path around her in white fog that met the morning dew, making a thick fog that blanketed the forest.

The fog made it hard to see, and even harder to hear, and Sarah was reminded that she was quite alone in an unknown part of the Labyrinth. She fished in her jacket-pocket for the clay pin; it was time for some goblin encouragement. But her hand came away empty: no pin, and no goblin. "Yimmil? Yimmil, where are you?" She looked around but couldn't see more than three feet in front of her. She took a careful step forward, and then another, and a third—and heard a crunch as her shoe crushed something delicate. Under her shoe were the shards of the clay pin, thin as eggshells, broken beyond repair.

"Yimmil!" Sarah shrieked. "Oh, no, Yimmil! I'm so sorry!" She hovered over the broken pieces, feeling as shattered as the clay.

"Why sorry, Yes-Ma'am-Lady?" Yimmil peeped up over the moss-covered roots of a tree, fur wet and clumping in certain places.

"Aaagh!" Sarah said, reaching for him. He bounced up and took a flying leap into her arms. She ignored the wet goblin smell so glad she was to see her little companion. "I thought I'd killed you!" She picked up the earthenware shards, which melted like milk chocolate under her fingers.

Yimmil actually laughed patted Sarah on the hand. "Silly, Yes-Ma'am-Lady. No kill me."

"I'm glad I didn't," she replied with genuine relief as she released her hold on Yimmil. She opened her bag and pulled out two granola bars and a jar of peanut butter and shared the food with him. As she ate, methodically, she read The Labyrinth, combing through the pages for hints. _"Everything's in there, except what you really need to know,"_ she remembered Finnvah saying. _Well, if in doubt, consult the map. If there's no map, consult the footnotes_.

The Labyrinth wanted to open on its red ribbon, the scene three-fourths through the play, with her favorite speech in it. She turned to the flyleaf, and the title pages. The Labyrinth. She saw Jeremy's name there in bold print. And at the bottom of the page, along with copyright and publication information, squeezed in as an afterthought, _With Additional Material by Robin Zakar._ Her fingers traced the name. Was this one of Jareth's pseudonyms? She pushed the questions down, and flipped a few more pages to the beginning of the story.

The play began on a deserted battlefield, with a haggard queen in a bloody dress searching for the body of her husband, King Meander, and their son, Prince Meander. The stage directions indicated that this was Meander's Queen, close to madness. She hears a voice from the earth, a man's voice calling out to her, the voices of her missing husband and child.

**KING MEANDER:**  
 **Lover my Lover, come fetch me soon**  
 **It's under the earth I am.**

**PRINCE MEANDER:**  
 **Mother my Mother catch me up soon**  
 **For under the earth I am.**

**MEANDER'S QUEEN:**  
 **Husband, my bridegroom, my mind has gone wild.**  
 **It's under the earth you are.**  
 **My lover, my lover where is our child?**  
 **It's under the earth you've gone.**

**KING MEANDER:**  
 **It's only forever**  
 **until we are found**  
 **with the lost and lonely.**  
 **We're underground.**

And then the Goblin King appeared, and opened the doors of the Labyrinth to the Queen. He was supposed to wear a great horned mask that covered his entire face. As a child, and even as an adult, she had found the image of the mysteriously masked Goblin King incredibly and frankly erotic. After her recent sojourn in the Fairy Ring, she thought that might be about to change.

Sarah shook her head. The rhythm of the words and the narrative of the play were so very, very familiar that she read without comprehending, without really sensing what she was reading. And she'd risked so much to get this book back; she couldn't afford to let her memory of what the play was interfere with what it might still have to tell her.

She turned to the end of the play, the ultimate confrontation that as a child she hadn't understood or been able to absorb.

**MEANDER'S QUEEN:**  
 **Give me my husband.**  
 **Through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered**  
 **I have fought my way here to the gates at the very end of the Labyrinth**  
 **For my heart is warm where yours is cold,**  
 **And my love is as strong as death.**

At the end of the play, he pulled his mask away to reveal himself as King Meander in disguise, with his goblin page their son. Meander's Queen had redeemed her son and husband from the Labyrinth, land between-death-and-life, by a supreme act of self-sacrifice and love, and the ability to see what was, despite the fact that the land of death had forced her beloved family into a strange disguise. Sarah considered this anew, and more carefully.

_Jareth, if you're dead, I will kill you_ , she thought, and smiled. She'd been less interested in the conclusion of the play and another woman's husband than she was with the enigmatic Goblin King, who flirted and beguiled Meander's Queen with promises of delight and forgetfulness of grief and care if she would only be his Queen Below.

The play was full of overwrought and contrived verse. And yet, the story was still immensely powerful, moreso now that she was a woman than when she'd been a girl. The Labyrinth had been magical for Sarah, and equally magical for her mother, the story which had pulled Linda Williams away from her family and back into the theatrical underworld that Jeremy seemed to rule so effortlessly. Jeremy: her enigmatic stepfather. She'd never thought to resent either one of them for screwing her up emotionally. That was just what love did. It made you forget everything else.

Her hair prickled on her head. One of the reasons she'd always preferred the Goblin King to King Meander in the play was that you could kiss and cuddle and dump a villain with no qualms of conscience. But if Jareth wasn't a villain… she couldn't just kiss him, or fuck him, and forget about him. Being intimate with him would mean all sorts of emotional complications. Because she… because she…

_I love Jareth_ , she thought. _I love him. I'm a bigger fool than my mother, because he can't even love me back_. She snapped her Red Book closed and stuffed it back into her bag. _But I love him_. This knowledge didn't fill her with romantic hearts-and-roses. It carried the weight of stone certainty. There was something about the fog, something about wondering in near blindness that caused you to see clearer into yourself.

_"And I am ashamed of my monstrous selfishness,"_ she recalled Jareth saying. _Well, Jareth, that makes two of us. I'm sorry I keep dicking you around. But I'm terrible at relationships too._ She wandered slowly, cutting trails through the mist, Yimmil at her heels, lost in thought, lost in many ways.

_What does being in love with Goblin King even look like?_ Never for a moment did Sarah truly envision herself in such a predicament, and after learning more about her connection to Jareth, the realization confused and confounded her. _What would it mean to have him love me back?_ _Do I need him to love me back?_ She paused her inner ramblings as she came closer to a fast moving stream. After several moments trying to find a way to cross, she picked up Yimmil and rock-jumped from one bank to the other, still lost and still wondering: _Do I need him to love me back?_

_No_ , she answered herself some five minutes later, picking and choosing her way. _And I won't even hate myself for my foolishness if this is all some sort of game or ruse or trick. He can hurt me if it's his pleasure to hurt me._ The thought made her quiver with desire _. I'd be glad to suffer, if it gave him pleasure._ That thought stopped her cold in her tracks, her feet shuffling as she resumed her pace. _But I won't let him hurt anyone else_. She clutched her hands into fists by her side. _Only me. If the consequences of helping him will hurt anyone else, I'll stop. I won't do it. And if he has any feeling for me at all, he won't ask for anything more than that._ Because that was one of the dictates of Love she had learned the hard way, her first time in the Labyrinth, under Jareth's tutelage: the price of Love could not be paid in stolen coin: you had to pay it all yourself. The earth felt steadier under her feet now, her way more certain. Her feet certainly didn't have wings, but she felt electrified and expectant. Calmer now that she had seemed to puzzle out some of her mind and heart's inner workings.

"Yes-Ma'am-Lady?" Yimmil asked, interrupting her thoughts. "Where we going?"

"I don't know, Yimmil. I'm trying to figure that out." Snatches and bits of verse and text came to her as she walked. Leaves, heavy with mist and dew, hung limp from the trees, and Sarah found herself pushing them out of her way.

Yimmil scurried away and sniffed the trunk of a nearby tree, looking back at Sarah with an uncomfortable look on his face. "Might have gone this way already, Yes-Ma'am-Lady."

Sarah groaned. "It's all this mist. I can't see anything." They came around the edge of a tree, and Sarah knelt down, pushing out an arm to prevent Yimmil from continuing past her. "Shh, shh, wait," she said to Yimmil's scrunched up and confused expression. It could have been her imagination, but Sarah thought she saw movement in the fog. Through the swirling mists her eyes focused on more movement, "There," she whispered to the goblin, "did you see that?"

Yimmil followed her gaze, nodding when at least two distinct shapes rushed from their left peripheral to the right. "I see Yes-Ma'am-Lady. What is?"

"I'm not sure." She concentrated and saw that there were shadows moving around them, not terribly tall ones, but shadows in the fog that had the vague shape of people. They kept moving from left to right and right to left, pausing before moving again. The motion seemed frantic, a little desperate, and Sarah had a sudden desire to know more, and to help if she could. "Hello!" she called out softly as she stood.

"No do that, Yes-Ma'am-Lady!" Yimmil hid behind her legs. "Don't know what they is!"

The movement stopped immediately, the shadows frozen at the sound of her voice. "Don't be afraid. I won't hurt you." She coaxed, ignoring the trembling goblin's advice.

Several moments passed by without any sign of life, long enough for Sarah to wonder if her eyes had just been playing tricks on her. And then, the shadows came forward, melting into four visible shapes. They all had the look of young oak trees and human beings both, though they would never be mistaken, quite, for either.

"Hallo," said the first one, stepping a little closer to Sarah than the other three. He had the voice of a boy sounded through lungs of wood, and a bit of knobby wood made his nose.

"Are you a Groom?" asked the second, shyly. Her leaves were thick around her oblong face, and she batted her eyelashes coyly at Sarah.

"That's not a Groom, dummy, it's a Man," said the third, another boy. The creatures came closer, though Sarah did not feel threatened. She was amazed though, when the closer they came, the smaller she felt. They seemed younger than their height; counting the leaves at the tip most branches, the tallest was nearing seven feet. Sarah wanted to place their ages at ten or eleven, if at least in terms of relative human maturity.

"Can't be!" scoffed the fourth, a female. The branches of her hair grew in a punkish coxcomb. She reached out and poked a twiggy hand at Sarah's wrist. "It's got leaves."

"I'm Sarah," she said, backing up a step and trying to look authoritative. She was wearing the King's favour. Hopefully that was about to start meaning something to the locals. "And as it so happens, I'm a woman. A human woman."

"Hu-man wo-man. I told you it was a Man!" crowed the third, leaves shaking with excitement. "Add that to the list!"

"Who are you?" Sarah asked. She glanced over them once more. Slender trunks, which would one day grow massive, ended in roots for feet; each creature seemed to have two main branches that operated as arms, but there were more branches and twigs that sprouted off their bodies and off their heads, some reaching for the sky, others growing in the random patterns of arboreal life. "What are you?" The four creatures shifted from one rooted foot to the other, glancing back and forth at one another, but none offered an answer. "Don't you know?" Sarah asked gently.

"No!" cried the smaller girl piteously.

"We need to be named!"

"Named?" Sarah echoed.

"There are names for everything," said the first. "Everyone has a name. Everyone but us." He kicked at a clump of dirt.

"What is?" muttered Yimmil, poking his head out from behind Sarah's leg carefully, his curiosity finally getting the better of him.

"Oh! Look! It's a goblin!"

"A weenie goblin!" scoffed the fourth.

"We've already got those in the list! There are tons of goblins!" moaned the third. "Let's talk to _her_. She's _new_."

"Children!" called out a woman's voice. The mists parted for her. She was like a beautiful woman, or a dream of a tree. Unlike the little ones, Sarah was able to label her exactly in the first moment. _A dryad. A spirit of trees_. Her hair was golden-green and her skin had the texture of wood, and her movements were like the swaying of willow-branches in the breeze. Around her neck she wore a large brass key. There was an unusually large squirrel, one of the rare red English type, bounding at her side, the size of a spaniel. The dryad looked at Sarah and gasped. "Man! Children, run!"

"No, it's okay, Auntie Salyx. She's got leaves." The first boy halted the dryad's flight with his words. Sarah held her arm out in what she hoped was a nonthreatening gesture. "See?" said the second creature.

"The King's blessing," the dryad breathed relieved, and she came closer. "Great Lady, forgive me." She made an elaborate curtsey, a modified form of the one Finnvah had used for Sarah, and for the Host of the Revels. "I am called Salyx. This is Raddiskirl," indicating the squirrel, whose ears twitched forward and back. "How may we serve you?"

"Um, that's just it, actually," Sarah said. "I'm probably here to serve you. I'm on a… quest?" That sounded good enough to Sarah, and she decided to run with it. "A quest for the Goblin King. I tend to land where I'm needed."

The dryad considered this carefully. "I am Salyx," she said brittlely.

"Sarah," Sarah said. The dryad wasn't tall, and the hem of her skirt seemed to melt into the ground. The squirrel bounded up close to Sarah, chittering, and then bounded back, and then up into the branches of the first of the tree-children.

"If the King has sent for news of the children, you may tell him that all is well with them." Salyx placed one elegant hand over the key at her throat.

"The nameless children?" Sarah added doubtfully.

"What? Nonsense. Naughty children. You have names!" Salyx looked disapprovingly at the four children, and Sarah got the feeling that the dryad equivalent of grounding would be visited on them at some point in the future. Salyx looked back at Sarah. "They're very young, you see, and prone to mischief. But His Majesty himself gave them their names. This is Fordoron, Haradoroneh, Rhundoron, and Dunedoroneh."

The cadence of the names sounded familiar, but Sarah couldn't place the language.

"He told us _how_ to be called, but not _what_ we were to be called!" protested Fordoron.

"We don't know what we are!" Rhundoron added, her branches creaking as she pointed to Sarah. "You're a wo-man, that's a goblin, Father is an oak, Aunty Salyx is a dryad, but what are we? It's terrible not knowing."

Sarah frowned and crossed her arms. "Why does it matter? You have names, isn't that all you need?" Six pairs of eyes, seven if you counted the squirrel, turned to stare at Sarah as if she was the strangest creature among their merry group, and maybe to them she was, but it still made her bristle uncomfortably.

Oddly, it was Yimmil who offered the first bit of the puzzle. "Everyone has a name, Yes-Ma'am-Lady, in the Labyrinth."

Fordoron nodded, his wooden form creaking and a few leaves drifting to the forest floor. "If we don't know what we are, we don't know what we do." He paused, saddened. "That's terrible."

"We were going to visit the Mothertree, but she never tells us anything." Sarah saw the dryad's lips compress to the hardness of sorrow, as she watched the four children.

"Why don't we all go?" asked Sarah. "Let's go visit the Mothertree."

The mist slowly burned away as the day grew stronger. The woods, which had seemed to be all deserted parkland before, were thick with trees and trails and shrubbery. In a glade like a cathedral, with the green light filtering through all the green leaves, stood a massive oak, wider than three men with joined hands might circumference. The four children gave pert little bows to the great oak tree and then rushed up to its roots. Entwined and embraced in the oak tree's roots there was a separate moss-covered form that Sarah took for a great dead log, until she saw it had a feminine face, and a body like the girl-children. The ancient living upright oak held the smaller Mothertree's body close, and it was so poignant and tender that Sarah felt tears threaten, though she didn't know why.

"Tears for her, Lady?" murmured the dryad. "But she is past all pain, and her body rests in the shadow of her husband, Grandfather Oak."

"It's just Sarah," she said, scrubbing her face with her sleeve. Yimmil patted her head. "Who was she? What happened to her?" The children were kneeling down by the side of their dead mother, chirping questions at her, pouring clay cups of water over her from the spring, garlanding her with wreaths of fern and shade flowers, and then familiarly patting the living oak. The children of the Mothertree seemed not to understand what death was.

The living, embracing tree moaned and sighed as if under a heavy wind, but there was no wind. Raddiskirl bounded up his trunk and back down again, encompassing his girth with darting redness.

"Grandfather Oak says she came here long ago, when the Labyrinth was new. She was lost," translated the dryad. And then she added, "She came here long before I did, but after Grandfather Oak and his brethren. She was weary, and sad, and lonely." Grandfather Oak moaned again, a dry, rustling that was like a breeze through old leaves. If Sarah let her mind wander, she could almost understand snatches of words. The dryad continued to speak, "She had been through something too terrible to name, and had forgotten her own name." The dryad's eyes were deep pools of green-shaded water, full of sorrow. "She was incomplete."

The children had crept close as Salyx translated for Grandfather Oak, but they seemed to understand his language, and this story seemed to be one they had heard many times before, nodding knowingly at each detail. As the light filtered through the canopy with more strength, the forest began to hum and rustle with life and energy. Birds winged through the branches, bugs sang and buzzed, and other sylvan fairy creatures crept into the glade. The parklands had become more populous since she'd last been here; there had only been those strange fire-dancing goblin-creatures before, like college students, intent on lack of responsibility and exchanging body parts. There was a great humped-back gelid beast with a wealth of moss and lichen on his back, a few more dryads, and something that could only be a faun, peeping out between branches and trunks to watch and listen.

"Father tells us that in the world there is a sun," said Haradoroneh, "A light that rises and falls in the sky."

"And a moon," said Rundoron.

"Like lanterns that hold the light of the day and night. And stars!" said Fordoron.

"And rain. There's never rain here, only muggy mist. I want to feel the rain on my face," mused Dunedoroneh.

"There are lot more people here these days," Sarah said. "Is that the King's doing?"

"The King is generous," Salyx said coldly. "He has opened his lands to all the lost and lonely creatures who might otherwise lack a home. There is no more space for us in the land of Men."

"But no children," said Sarah speculatively. "You're all adults. Except for those four."

"The price of immortality is an inability to change," Salyx said. "We live, but don't increase our numbers. Only the King can grant the boon of increase, and he cannot make out of air, but only cherish and nurture what already is."

Grandfather Oak spoke again and Salyx translated. "He says to tell you that the Mothertree humbled herself and gave herself to him to wive. At the King's command she brought forth this fruit, and died."

"Children are rare in these lands," continued Salyx. "The word for children is the same word for fruit, and for wealth. We live and live, but there are no children. Perhaps no children but these, the fruit of the Mothertree and Grandfather Oak."

" _Your_ wealth," Sarah said, narrowing her eyes. "Jealously guarded."

"By the King's command," Salyx said, nostrils flaring.

"Walk with me," said Sarah. "And tell me about the King."

Salyx moved gracefully among the trees as they left the bower-grave of the Mothertree and her attending husband, Grandfather Oak. It was some time before she spoke. Yimmil hopped down from Sarah's bag and darted here and there, exploring the forest.

"His Majesty is beautiful, and wise," Salyx said. "Wise enough to know the limits of his own wisdom. He told me once that the Pillars of the Underearth were three, and their names were Desire, and Truth, and Choice. And that there was room here so long as those three things persisted. Desire, and Truth, and Choice, the foundation of all wisdom. He gave me the means to open a door into the world, for the children, but only after they knew their name and could bear the weight of that knowledge." Her hand clutched around the key, and she stopped before a tall stone wall, where there was set a great stone arch and a wooden door, with a lock and a latch. It appeared to be the boundary of the parklands.

"So the King is beautiful?" Sarah said, teasing, and only feeling a vague flutter of jealousy. "Did you ever… date?"

Salyx looked disturbed. "His Majesty is beautiful. He is also… repulsive." If a dryad could blush, Salyx would have been blushing. "But that is Truth. His kind are great makers, great beings. His Majesty humbled himself to be our king, but he is also deformed. He is, forgive me, too much like a Man, and his heart is cold. But even without the act of love, I love him. He has given us all reason to love him. He is generous with everything, even with what he'd rather not give."

"Okay," replied Sarah. "I'll keep that in mind." _Desire, Truth, and Choice. The Pillars of the Underearth_. She gave the dryad a sidelong look. "Salyx, I know the names for your children."

Salyx paused and drew the edges of her green-brown sleeves around herself.

"They're Ents. The Mothertree, she was an Entwife." Which was, of course, nonsense. Ents were creatures from Tolkien, from stories. How could they be real? _But then_ , _The Labyrinth_ _is just a story too, isn't it?_. The realization that stories could exist alongside her realm had already turned her world upside down. She didn't want to be so caught off guard again. _What if every story is a window? What if every story is real?_

"The four children are Entings. Ent-children. Ents are tree-herders. Forest-shepherds. Long memories, cautious and practical, wise and good and strong." She racked her brains trying to remember as much of her Tolkien lore as she could, tried to add bits from the previews of the second movie, which wouldn't be out until December. "They talk to trees, waking them up and putting them to sleep. They keep the woodlands safe from fire and axe. They rage against cruelty, and can fight evil. And they keep lists of every creature in creation, to know them, the good and the bad."

"Why are you telling me this?" Salyx asked, looking afraid.

"Because of what you've told me," Sarah replied. "The Pillars of the Underearth. You desire to keep the children. Their desire is to be what they are. You've got a choice to make, right now, and hopefully you'll be wise enough to tell your children the truth about their name. Unlock this door." Sarah tapped at the great wooden door. It was a height for a full-grown Ent. "You don't have to open it, but you have to unlock it. They won't be Entings forever. Already they're growing up and asking questions. A nursery with a locked door is a prison. Let them start to explore the world. Let them go out into it. They need to grow. They need to be what they are. They'll come back to visit. That is, if you're their parent and not their jailor."

"That is a terrible risk you're asking me to take," Salyx said, voice trembling. "And you don't love them. How can you command me to do such things if you don't love them?"

_It's not fair_ , Sarah mused. "It's not a matter of love. It's a matter of authority. I'm the King's voice and the King's hand. If he was here speaking with you now, do you think he'd tell you something different?" Salyx looked sad and worried. "It doesn't have to be today, or tomorrow, Salyx," Sarah said gently. "But it'll have to happen someday, and sooner than you'd like. Truth hurts."

Slowly Salyx took the key from its thong around her neck. She hesitated, and handed the key to Sarah. It was such a simple thing; it could be a key from her own world, the size of a hotel passkey, square-topped, stamped with inconsequential numerals. "You must keep it," Salyx said. "For every door it unlocks, it must lock another. And for every door locked, it must open another. I'm weak. I might lock again what it unlocks. But I must have something of equal worth in exchange, and His Majesty gave it to me."

"Thank you for this," Sarah said gratefully. "I mean it." She unslung her bag and picked apart the bungies that held the sword. She offered it to Salyx, blade down. "This is the King's sword. It's a weapon made out of Time. It's drunk a good deal of blood. If you need it to defend your children, it's here for you." Salyx took the blade and pressed the hilt against her breast.

"Okay," Sarah said, taking a deep breath. And she unlocked the door, but didn't open it, and slipped the thong and the key over her head.

Salyx walked with Sarah to the very perimeter of the forest, where a stile crept up over the retaining wall. "On the other side of that wall," Salyx said, "Is the Bog of Unfiltered Speech. If you immerse yourself in the water, you'll never be able to stop talking." She had reclaimed some of her proudness, and added, "Not that I can tell the difference with Men. They never seem to stop talking."

"I'll keep that in mind," Sarah grinned. "Thank you, Salyx." She attempted, clumsily, to recreate the elaborate bow that seemed to be manners for people of respect. "Yimmil! Come on! We're going." Yimmil gamboled ahead of her, scaling the stone stile and was back down the other side before you could say "Goblin King."

"Goodbye," Sarah said. "You're a good mother." She waved, and tried to keep the image of the four Entings surrounding the dead Mothertree, and the sad, loyal dryad who would have to give up her children to serve Love. _Nothing ever stays the same_ , Sarah realized. Even in the Underground, things change. Before she turned away, she had to wonder: _Am I causing these changes, or am I the one being changed?  
_

* * *

_This chapter is co-authored by the incomparable Nyllewell who stepped up when I was lost and offered all sorts of better directions. If there's stuff you like, please direct the credit where it's due. Nyllewell, thank you. Thank the gods Below and Above for you. Please leave us a note if you've enjoyed what you've read.  
_

* * *

_**Next… Chapter 12: "Perspectives from Great Heights"** _


	12. Perspectives from Great Heights

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Soundtrack for Chapter 12
> 
> The Dark Crystal Overture"—Trevor Jones, The Dark Crystal Soundtrack  
> "The Sore Feet Song"—Ally Kerr

 

**Perspectives from Great Heights**   


* * *

The Bog of Unfiltered Speech hadn't seemed that bad, at first. It was noisy, but not overwhelmingly loud. The water was dingy-white, and white reeds grew out of the water, and those reeds spoke with human voices. As with the smell of the Bog of Eternal Stench, she could make a crude filter for her overstimulated senses, and kept her fingers in her ears. Yimmil found the entire place to be nervous-making, and stuck to her shoulder, which made her tired and sometimes caused one finger or another to slip. This happened more and more often as the afternoon wore on.

The voices in the Bog were all sorts of voices, but mostly they were hers—not the way her voice sounded when it was recorded and played back, but the way her voice sounded to her own ears. This wouldn't have been a problem except for what the voices _said_.

"I hate you. I hate _you_!"

"I wish the goblins _would_ take you away. Right now."

"I hate you, Karen!"

"It's not fair!"

"Your food is there, Jareth. I made it just for you. Use your fork."

Every cruel and thoughtless word she'd ever spoken was given back to her. But worse were the other voices. The voices of cruel things said to her. Her mother's voice, begging her… The taunting voices of her junior-high frenemies. And then there was Jareth's voice.

"My monstrous selfishness."

"All I ever did was refuse to refuse you anything!"

"This will end in tears."

And then Jareth's voice, speaking words she'd never heard him say, or imagined him saying.

"End this game."

And in a voice of angered disgust, " _Love_ you? You don't understand that word. So neither do I."

_"Never,"_ Jareth's voice whispered.

She might have felt better if the words were lies, but she remembered saying the things the bog-voices said back to her. There was no denying the weight of their truth. Instead, she tried not to hear. It was too easy to imagine Jareth speaking his words to his captors, and even easier to imagine him saying them to her, at some point in the future. Sarah kept her eyes on her goal—a small mountain of grey stone that she used as a landmark to circumvent the tricky and treacherous stone and shale paths through the Bog. She breathed a sigh of relief when she saw a fallen stone obelisk fording the edges of the swamp, and balanced, tightrope-walker style, across it and out.

"Noisy!" Yimmil said in relief, once the babbling cacophony of self-hatred was behind them.

"No doubt," Sarah said. She patted him gently. "You're a good goblin, Yimmil. I'd be lonely without you."

The mountain—probably, technically a hill—had looked smooth and domelike from her position in the Bog, but closer she saw it was all folded and intercut with stairs and switchback paths. She chose the nearest one and began to climb. In places the steps were so steep and shallow that she used her hands as well, clambering upward like a cat on a ladder. As the day wore on, her bag, and Yimmil, felt heavier and heavier. The key around her neck jangled against the stones, and she tucked it under her shirt. _I'll find some door to lock with this_ , she thought, _and then I'll use it to unlock whatever trap Jareth's in_. All things considered, it was a good trade for the sword, which she might have tossed off the side of the cliff an hour ago anyway. It was too heavy.

_What if I need it back? To break the curse?_ she asked herself.

_Fuck it. I know where I left it. It's not like there's a clock ticking this time._

_Yeah, but you don't know that._

"I'll ask him tonight!" she barked out loud.

While the mountain had looked as solid and seamless as an egg from below, as she climbed ever-upward she saw that it was interfolded with narrow defiles, passes, and interior ledges lined with rock where hardscrabble vegetation grew, where clever-eyed crows examined her with interest. And though there was no sun to mark the passage of time, when the light felt strongest overhead and cast only a fat puddle of shadow, she paused at one of these lees in the stairway and fed herself, and Yimmil, and gulped down another bottle of water. She was definitely tired, definitely hungry, and most definitely footsore. But from the top of this mountain, who knew how much she might be able to see?

Her ears twitched. Amid the conversations of crows, she heard the distant sound of strange low keening music. It sounded so familiar… with a sigh of reluctance, she put her bag back on, snapped her fingers for Yimmil to follow, and followed a wide crack in the face of the stone, off the path, toward the source of the music. And there he was, orange as orange and unnatural as imagination: Ludo. He tossed his horned head as she came through the chasm-path into a rounded bowl of an interior plateau, and his eyes lit up.

"Sawwah!"

"Ludo!" she shrieked, running forward and tossing herself into his arms. Ludo caught and hugged her as easily, and as gently, as she would Yimmil. "Sawwah!" Ludo roared gently. "Sawwah back!"

"Oh, Ludo," Sarah said, hugging him back. "I'm so glad to see you again." Ludo put her down.

"Big smelly Yeti," grumbled Yimmil, scowling with displeasure and jealousy.

"Who that?"

"This is Yimmil. Yimmil, Ludo. Ludo, Yimmil." Yimmil crossed his arms over his narrow chest and stared his dislike. "Yimmil, say hello to Ludo," Sarah commanded. She stared hard at the little goblin, who continued to scowl. "Yimmil!" she barked.

"Hello to Ludo," Yimmil said, so darkly it sounded like a threat. Sarah sighed. It was the best she was probably going to get.

"Ludo," asked Sarah, "Who were you singing to?"

"Rocks," said Ludo cheerfully. "Rocks friends!" He turned his big orange body to stare at the three huge cairns of rocks standing in the center of the mountain's dead caldera.

Cautiously, she moved to the middle of the three looming piles of stone, looked at each in turn. _How funny_ , she thought. _One could almost think these stacks of rocks were people, buried torso-deep in the ground. That bird's nest looks like hair, and that lichen like eyebrows…_ she let out a little gasp when the cairn she was looking at blinked its eyes at her with a flicker of shale.

"Hello. I didn't mean to disturb you," she said. She realized she was trembling. Yimmil made a great leap onto her back and stared at the stone giants nervously. "I'm Sarah."

"Sawwah friend!" Ludo bellowed in his best conversational tone.

"Little daughter, you didn't disturb us," said the first stone giant, with a voice like a quiet avalanche.

"We heard your breathing coming up the mountain," said the second, with a voice as deeply soothing.

"And normally all there is to hear are the conversations of crows," said the third, winking at her.

"Forgive Errolan his flirtation," said the first giant. "He's embarrassingly young. Only some five hundred years."

Errolan snapped his fingers merrily, making a shower of brief sparks. "Listen to old Rephaites natter on, pretending he's ancient as the foundations of the Earth. He's only ten thousand years old."

"And I am Neringia, since my brothers found no fit way to introduce me to you, Sarah. I won't give my age, since I'm of middle years and particularly insecure about that fact. You've made a pilgrimage up this mountain to seek our counsel, whether you know it or not. Your face and footsteps are full of questions."

"Please," she said, "I'm looking for the King. The King of the Labyrinth. Where is he?" She swallowed, knowing she was taking a terrible risk by uttering his name, but these giants seemed so kind, and were friends of Ludo's. "Where is Jareth?"

"You will find him in the last place you look," said Rephaites grimly.

"You will find him in the center of the Labyrinth," offered Errolan.

"I will clarify," Neringia said. "Wherever the King sits is the head of the table, and wherever the King is, is the center of the Labyrinth. But you will surely find him, if you seek. Haven't you found him already?"

Sarah bit her lip. _Damn this enigma!_ She opened her mouth and closed it. How could she convince these three stone giants to give her a straight answer?

"I love him," she said. "Please. Please, help me."

"Ah, me, young love," sighed Errolan.

"Ancient love," corrected Rephaites.

But it was Neringia who looked on her with compassion and answered. "The King of the Labyrinth passed this way, little daughter," Neringia said kindly. "And we spoke of many things. Of shoes and ships and sealing-wax," and Sarah completed the line with him, "Of cabbages and Kings."

"I'm trying to free him," Sarah said. "He said he was under a curse. He said I could free him."

"Oh?" Errolan's tone was distant and careful.

"Yes. Please, can you tell me—that is, I want to help him. Can you help me?"

"Do you know the story of Tam-Lin," asked Rephaites gravely. "and young Janet, who loved him? He was marked by the Faerie Queen to pay the Teind, the tax to Hell. He might have gone willingly, but for the fact that he loved a mortal woman, who could redeem him from his fate."

"I know Tam-Lin," Sarah said uncertainly. "Is that what's going on with Jareth? Has he been marked for death by the Faerie Queen? Is that where he is? Trapped? Waiting?"

"There is no Queen in the earthly realm, only a King set Over the World. But yes," said Neringia coldly. "He is trapped and waiting. As for the Teind, it is something that he has already paid."

"Will pay," corrected Errolan.

"Is paying," said Rephaites with finality. "Little daughter, time moves strangely here in the Labyrinth, and in even stranger currents for the fae, and strangest of all for mortals who cannot remember their own deaths, but must walk in a straight line from birth to grave. The King of the Labyrinth knows something of humanity's strange path, and to his peril, is bound to it. The _when_ of the Teind is immaterial to him and to us, and is something that lies outside of your linear perception of existence. Before your birth or after your death, this thing has already come to pass. And there is little chance that you will, or have, or are able to understand how to purchase his life and cheat Hell of its rightful tithe."

"Is Jareth dead?" she asked, heart in her mouth.

"The King is very close to death," murmured Rephaites in a grimly cautioning tone, "but he lives still. He lives now." His words held the weight of incontrovertible stone, rooted by aeons of compassion.

"His danger is great now that you have come. He dreams of freedom, and takes greater risks than ever he dared take before," intoned Errolan solemnly.

"He lives, and you can set him free," Neringia said, like an avalanche of sorrow.

"Please, can't you tell me more?" she asked, feeling desperate.

"We cannot," said Errolan, "Much as we might wish to."

"But there is one who could," qualified Neringia. "One who is very, very near."

"Ah, but he is dangerous," said Rephaites. "The King Over the World, in the Observatory."

"Observatory?"

"Under your feet," Neringia said. "Under the mountain. The King who rules over your world can be found in your world if you were to return there, but he can also be found Underground, in the Observatory, watching his prisoners."

"He counts the King of the Labyrinth as one of his servants, though he is not."

"And if speaking with him, you must never lie, nor neither ask nor answer direct questions, but always command and demand, as a monarch might. Else he might catch you up with the power you bear, and make you his slave."

"Little daughter," said Errolan, "You only have a touch of fae magic inside you, in the greater balance no more and no less than any human being might carry when magic was, and is, and may be thick upon the Earth. But the token you wear, the favour of the King of the Labyrinth, is enough to bend you to certain rules. If you bow to the King Over the World and serve him, then the King of the Labyrinth does as well."

"Will do," qualified Neringia.

"May have done," said Rephaites gravely.

"But isn't there any other way?" Sarah pleaded. "Couldn't you just explain things to me?"

"The King Over the World, being linear as a mortal in his course, will be able to explain better than we. He is proud, and boastful, and loves the sound of his own voice. The less you tell him, the more he will tell you. He understands well the curse of the King of the Labyrinth, and knows where the King is," said Errolan.

"Was," corrected Rephaites.

"May yet be," intoned Neringia.

_"I can't understand what I don't see,"_ Sarah remembered saying. _Well, this will be an education. And really, is it any more dangerous than anything I've already taken on?_ "Please, show me the door to the Observatory." Reflexively, her hand grasped the key between her breasts. She remembered what the goblins had said to her when she'd asked if the Goblin King had left a note. He had left a note: it had been a cry of longing anguish. _I'll find you, Jareth_ , she thought. _I'll free you_. _If you're under the Earth, like King Meander, or under this mountain, I'll find you and save you._

"We may open the door to the Observatory at the balance between light and darkness," said Rephaites sternly.

"The way in is not the way out," said Errolan.

"I don't suppose you can tell me where the exit is?" Sarah said hopefully, and was rewarded by a smile from Neringia.

"As it so happens, we can."

She spent the balance of the rest of the afternoon listening to the three stone giants and growing more and more frustrated with their contradictory and confused directions. "Stop," Sarah said finally. "I'll find the way out if it's there to be found." At the very worst, she could fall asleep in the Observatory—her overtired body demanded that she stretch out against Ludo right now and put this off until tomorrow—and sleep meant a conversation with Jareth. If Jareth couldn't help her out of any difficulty she'd gotten herself into, then she really was beyond help. _See what faith I have in you, my love?_ She patted Yimmil on the head and pulled out  The Labyrinth. Ludo began to sing, and the stone giants and, reluctantly but eventually, Yimmil, joined them in the soothing cacophony of voices.

**MEANDER'S QUEEN**   
**Dark they were, and golden-eyed, my husband and my son.**

_And isn't that just a trip?_ Sarah thought, wrapping Finnvah's scarf around her neck. She knew that when this play had been produced, Jeremy had played the role of the Goblin King, but his skin wasn't dark and his eyes were as blue as marbles. Whoever had originally written the play—Robin Zakar, Sarah was convinced—had provided the nuggets of substance to the story, while Jeremy had rearranged things to suit his egotistical logic. Whoever Robin Zakar was, he had determined—and Jeremy had overlooked—that King and Prince Meander had dark skin and brown eyes. Someone not white. Someone who looked like… Finnvah. But Finnvah wasn't Jareth. Definitely not Jareth.

_What if Robin Zakar is a woman?_ Sarah thought. There were certain resonances to the story that felt indefinably feminine to her. _Put Robin Zakar, the other author, in the place of Meander's Queen. She's looking for her dark-haired, dark-eyed husband and son, but instead she keeps finding the Goblin King, until he takes off his mask and becomes, instead of a tormentor, the thing she was looking for all along_.

She closed her eyes and imagined Jareth, Goblin King, putting on a mask, instead of taking one off, a mask that turned him into King Meander, dark-skinned and golden-eyed, to woo and win the heartbroken Queen in the face and form of her husband. _Yes. That fits_. But it was very strange to feel as though this story were bigger than its pages, a mystery without answer, a puzzle without clues.

She let the book flip open to the page it wanted to open to.

**MEANDER'S QUEEN**   
**Give me the child.**   
**Through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered,**   
**I have fought my way here to the castle beyond the Goblin City,**   
**to take back the child that you have stolen.**   
**For my will is as strong as yours,**   
**And my kingdom is as great!**

**You have no power over me. (13)**

That line had always been hard to remember because it was offset from the other text; she had reminded herself of it only by summoning the word _THIRTEEN_ to her mind. The other lines of the speech were so well-worn in her memory that she'd never need the book to tell them to her again; but for the first time she followed the footnote to the list of miniscule stage directions in the appendix, over the _ibid_ and _ex libris_. _13. **As per 9**_ , the footnote read. She looked to nine. **_9\. Alternative line given to the GOBLIN KING_** , said the notes.

"Fuck a _duck_!" Sarah shouted, snapping the book closed and slapping her forehead.

Five heads swiveled to stare at her. "Sorry," she said. "Go back to singing. I'm just having a moment here." _Alternative line given to the Goblin King! "You have no power over me_." _Alternative line given to Goblin King._ That was going to break her brain from now to eternity. It changed the entire meaning of one of the most climactic scenes of the play. _That line could be Jareth's!_

What it meant, of course, was that she had somehow, without even knowing it, used Jareth's own words against him. Eating fairy fruit put you permanently in the power of the one who offered it, Sarah knew, at least according to the rules set down in all the stories. And that meant that Jareth, rather than bowing to the convention of the story, had instead bowed to compassion. Or memory. He himself could have kept her forever. The price she'd paid to free herself, and Toby, hadn't been magic words. It had been Love. It had been her sacrifice, and Jareth-the-judge's acknowledgement that the price was sufficient.

**_THIRTEEN_** , the partial title of Finnvah's Red Book. And her book too, the core of her book, the line which had been _THIRTEEN_ and then, at the age of fourteen, triumphant in the Labyrinth, just the word _TOBY_ , a name that had come to mean for Sarah, over the years, the name of perfect Love. Love that didn't ask for anything and demanded everything. _Finnvarrah's book and my book_ , Sarah thought. _They're the same book. At their essence, they're about Desire, Truth, and Choice. They're about the Labyrinth_. _They're about Love_.

"Lord," she moaned to herself, but quietly. The singing went on _. He says he has no heart_ , Sarah thought, _but he does. He_ must. _He gave out justice when he didn't have to. Is that what all this is about_? _Is he under a curse because he chose to do what was compassionate and good instead of playing by fae rules?_

_He understands Love_ , Sarah thought. _He understands it even if he doesn't' know he understands it_. She crushed her face down into her fists, trying to pound a revelation out.

The Labyrinth, in The Labyrinth, was a place between life and death. And everything she'd studied in the years leading to her M.A. in English had been about that space between, and its inhabitants. She remembered Katherine Briggs' The Fairies in Tradition and Literature, because when she'd read it, it had been an epiphany. The fairies in English tradition, according to Briggs, were beings which existed best in the places and times of ambiguity—between light and dark, life and death, equinox and sunset. _Like Jareth_ , she thought. _Like the Labyrinth._ And like _The Labyrinth_. the Labyrinth in the play and in her experience was the land between life and death, between flesh and spirit, between childhood hope and adulthood responsibilities, between love and hatred, and just like a dancer trapped in a fairy ring, a person could set foot on the edge and yank a captive free.

**GOBLIN KING**   
**Everything seems possible and nothing is as it seems.**

_Does that mean that Jareth is...  
_

But her thought melted away like water, and the cusp of a realization unfulfilled vanished as the three stone giants boomed in unison, "IT IS TIME"

The sunset-without-sun traced freakishly lovely patterns of color across the eggshell sky.

They were waiting for her. She hugged Ludo again, and the giants reached their enormous hands up, up, up, seeming to brush the sunset clouds with their fingertips. Their other arms pointed down, and the stone between their bellies telescoped open.

"Go on," said Errolan, "and take nothing that is not already yours by right."

"Take heed, and go much further," said Rephaites, "Showing no fear."

"This is the way," said Neringia. "Ask and answer no questions, but command like a Queen."

"Goodbye," Sarah said. She gave Ludo one more squeeze. "I promise I'll come back and see you when this is over, Ludo." Yimmil even deigned to give him a lordly condescending nod of his head.

And she stepped through, and they fell, fell, fell, into the depths of the Observatory.

* * *

_**Next… Chapter 13: "Observations in the Lower Depths"** _


	13. Observations in the Lower Depths

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Soundtrack for Chapter 13
> 
> "The Man Who Sold the World" –David Bowie  
> "The Hearts Filthy Lesson"—David Bowie  
> "Pretty When You Cry"—Vast

 

**Observations in the Lower Depths**

* * *

**Readers: This chapter contains brief allusions to sexual violence.**

* * *

It was the most curious sensation, as she fell, or rather glided, down a spiral slide into the depths of the Observatory—a feeling of falling up, sliding up, like a game of Snakes and Ladders with the ascents and descents reversed. The sides of the slide cradled her close as a bobsled run, and there was no way to check her descent. Yimmil held her hair like reins and screeched like a banshee. Fear was there, her new companion, warning her that when she landed she would die a quick and broken-bodied death, but as she went further in, deeper into this subterranean lair, her movement slowed, and she was able to catch the lip of the slide and land, relatively gracefully, on both feet.

Sarah looked around with cautious interest. The Observatory looked a bit like someone's vision of the future circa 1980: black tile, very clean, high ceilings with grilles that let in light and air and chiaroscuro shadows. The flickering blue light was doubled in the walls; there were television sets lining the convex walls from floor to ceiling, like the compound eyes of digital insects. _So this is the Observatory_ , she mused. _Well, let's_ observe.

Every television screen—huge but obsolete types of screens, bulging slightly in the middle in the way cathode-ray screens tended to do—showed a prisoner tucked into a particular cell. But they didn't particularly look like prisoners, or like people. They looked like fae, and their cells looked like habitats. _A prison or a zoo?_ Sarah wondered and was drawn to look at several screens as she passed through the halls. She could hear whispers emanating from the screens like the sibilant hush of a film on mute.

She saw a naked creature without eyes presiding over a feast of jeweled and tempting fruit.

She saw a hag made of needles sewing a doll that was a lure.

She saw a man with a permanent grin made from garish cheek-slashes holding court over the madhouse.

And a slender man without a face following in the wake of burned children. And more. Much more. Some screens played endless commercials, some were dark and empty, some showed test patterns, some television shows, and some movies—one of hers was there, perhaps screening itself endlessly to a nonexistent audience of potentially one. Or two. Observing what she could in the blue-tinted graininess of the Observatory's screens, she was frightened and disgusted by much of what she saw, and delighted by very little.

"Riveting, isn't it?" came a voice from out of the darkness. And in a follow spotlight, was a man, dressed in a three-piece suit, wearing a ridiculous stovepipe hat under which hateful, malicious, gleeful eyes slapped against her in a gaze like a blow. She couldn't tell if he was horrifically old or ridiculously young, but she felt his coldness. His footsteps on the floor as he approached bloomed greenbacks and receipts and electrical pulses, and stock-tickers ran faint digital green in the seams of his clothing. _Answer no questions_ , she reminded herself fiercely, _and ask none_. If there was one thing she was absolutely certain of in this moment, it was that this creature was fae, fae in the flesh as surely as Jareth was, and that he was hateful in all his ways.

"The King Over the World," Sarah said, trying to force a light tone. "Greetings in the name of the King of the Labyrinth."

"Charmed," he said dismissively, and pulled a phone out of his breast pocket, and took her picture with a flash that made her momentarily blind. He pulled his phone back close, tapping a message into it, and getting a message back as quickly. "You're Sarah Sophia Williams, unless I mistake my guess. Number 333-98-0745."

When he gave her her name, she felt it like a hard punch to the chest. _But I have other names_ , she thought defiantly, _names you can't know. Names I don't even know. Every human soul is an architect, and unless you can say my name with love, you'll never hurt me._ The pain faded. "And you've brought a goblin! How disgusting." He made a moue of distaste, and Yimmil, doing Sarah proud, hissed at the King Over the World. "But then, if you're speaking in the name of the King of the Labyrinth, perhaps not too surprising. Greetings, little un-nephew." Yimmil blew him a raspberry.

"You have me at a disadvantage," Sarah said calmly. "You know my name but I don't know yours."

The King Over the World laughed. "John Company." He had the rich drawling fruity accent of the places where New England became England, and the spoiled grandsons and great-grandsons of rascal robber barons fancied themselves kings of all creation. Familiar territory. American territory. "Pleased to make your acquaintance, Sarah Sophia Williams, 333-98-0745."

This time, there was no pain, and the King Over the World studied her face and seemed dismayed when she was able to meet his eyes. "Welcome to the Observatory."

"Thank you for having me," she said. "Though it seems more like a prison than an Observatory. To me."

"Well, what's the use of having all these creatures bound in unless you can see what they're doing?" John Company replied. He turned his back to her and walked among the bulging aisles, tracing his fingers across the screens that flickered in his wake. "Everything here is dangerous, but young Jare'th keeps them safely tucked away. Until I call for them, that is. All tucked away waiting to do my bidding, like Jare'th himself."

Sarah disliked the way she said Jareth's name, feeling something off about it. The syllables weren't fitting together, and she sensed the ellipses, the sound of a tongue caught between the teeth and an owl's hiss. She almost asked him why he was saying the name that way, but she caught herself in time, biting her lip to silence herself. _No questions_ , she reminded herself. She waited calmly, petting Yimmil protectively. All three of them looked around at the fae creatures in their screened boxes.

"I see you watching them," John Company said merrily. "Some of them are watching you, too. The dangerous ones, the wakeful ones. Think of what they'd like to do to you. All these rough and rude beasts, whose hours will come at last, they're here because I've put them here. They're such malicious foxes, and rabbit-humanity is just so very tasty. Can't have them running roughshod over you. You might remember that you're wild creatures with something other than yourselves to fear. I keep you safe. I keep a screen of ice between you. _Winter_ keeps you safe. And you can't even muster a thank-you-Your-Majesty. I call that rude."

"It's June," Sarah countered. "Summer, not Winter."

"You're mistaken, Sarah Sophia Williams, 333-98-0745. It's Winter deep and cold." John Company seemed to be waiting for her to speak, and with the exasperated sigh of a put-upon party guest making conversation with a charity invite, spoke again. "In Summer, doors are left open wide for all manner of creation to come and go. Everything's rich and full of life and leisure and the world entire spreads itself at your feet like a carpet. But in Winter, ah me. That's when doors closes up tight, and you play meaningless games, tell stories around the fire, and keep close to home. I am the King of Winter. This is _my_ _age_ , and the best place before the television hearth is mine. When I came to my rightful throne, I did what was necessary. Warning all the loose and fickle fae and faeries that the doors would soon close. And I gave everyone games to play. Such games! Your cameras and phones and computers and movies and teevees, the screens through which we eat you, the fat my people consume while they hibernate. Passing diversions. Games. And then Jare'th comes and opens the doors I had shut and _fucks everything up_." He bared his teeth at her, snarling, but she didn't flinch.

"You're pronouncing his name incorrectly," she said.

"No, I assure you, I'm not. That's the best name he could muster, ripped away from bits and pieces of a dead man's memory. Still, he was always good at making a sow's ear out of a silk purse, was Jare'th. I wonder what he's trying to make of you."

"That's none of your business," Sarah said firmly.

John Company gave a horrid, malicious giggle. "Humanity," laughed John Company. "Jare'th's really scraping the bottom of the barrel if you're the best he could manage." His gleeful black eyes searched her face again. _Finvarrah_ , Sarah thought, and allowed herself a superior smile. _Maybe I'm the best he could manage and maybe I'm not, but I'm not the only one helping_.

"In any event, the name he's wearing now is immaterial. I have a much better one for him, as soon as he gives up his game. I'll call him Beautiful Victim, and he'll play his part forever and to perfection next time round, forgetting he was ever anything else." John Company said, and flicked his phone at one of the screens, a blank screen at her eye-level, where it flickered to life.

She could see Jareth, as if there were a camera trained on him. He clutched at the pale industrial tiles on the floor with naked hands, as if trying to crawl away from something. His blue eye was as dilated as his black one, wide with animal pain. A hand came out of the dark and grasped his hair, pulling his head back. There were ugly old bruises on the side of his face, and fresh ones beginning to form. His mouth was swollen, bloody, as if cruelly over-kissed, or bitten. He jerked forward, and then back, as if he were in the jaws of some terrible monster which was slowly and painfully devouring him. The hand left his hair and disappeared, and he rocked back and forth, in and out of the frame, always looking ahead. "Don't look, Yimmil," Sarah said, and covered the little goblin's face with her hand, but he pushed her hand away. "Already seen, Yes-Ma'am-Lady," he said sadly. "Seen it already."

There was something terrible in the locomotive rhythm of Jareth's body, and she saw his face tense, as if each blow were more painful than the last. The rhythm… it was the movement of sex. There was no pleasure in Jareth's face at all, only controlled anguish, contained pain. He didn't want what was happening to him, and there was only one word for that: rape. This was a rape. She was watching Jareth being raped, by some unseen assailant outside the frame.

_I'll kill you,_ she thought. _Whoever you are, hurting him. I'll kill you._ Her breath wouldn't seem to come into her lungs. There had been a time, just once, when she was twenty-five, a loud and drunken party, and the man who'd volunteered to see her home had turned her pliant and swaying body over the edge of his car hood, hitched her skirt up to her thighs, and her mind had been spinning, and all her movements strange and distanced, and she had thought, _He's going to rape me now_. And she remembered thinking for a moment, _I'll just endure it. This is what happens now, and it's easier not to fight. I'm so drunk it won't hurt too badly_. But instead she'd twisted out of his sloppy, heavy embrace and slid between his demanding body and the car, and walked out into the street, jerking her panties up and her skirt down, and nearly been hit by oncoming traffic, which was preferably dangerous. It had been simple to get away. Once she had understood that escape was _possible_. The next day, she took steps. She acquired her gun.

Sarah fingered it now, lovingly, releasing the catch and then the safety. She imagined putting a perfect bullet in the face of the rapist, if she could only see it, letting his brains and rotten blood all run out of his nasty head. She looked at Jareth again. _Fight it_ , she willed him. _Or if you can't, don't be there. Don't let it hurt you_. She felt the taste of puke in the back of her throat, and she swallowed hard.

"Intriguing, isn't it? Watch his face. You can actually see the moment when he decides to capitulate rather than fight. You can see it in his eyes as he understands what it is to be cracked open by human desire. One wonders if he actually enjoyed it."

"No one's enjoying this," she said calmly, and turned her face away to stare her hatred at the King of Winter. "No one except you." She caressed the weapon at her hip.

"Oh, I think the good doctor enjoyed himself immensely." John Company gave a sigh of pleasure. "I'm showering him with endless rewards for filling his role—and Jare'th—so sublimely well. Granting all his desires in perpetuity. Wait. Let's watch this again. I love this part." He pressed a button on the remote and the scene rewound itself.

_This is over_ , Sarah thought. _This is the past._ _This is long ago, before my birth, like Rephaites said. All the King of Winter can do is watch. He's just an observer here_. And if she forced herself to look past the despicable action on the screen, she could see the differences between that Jareth and the one she knew. Shorter hair. No amulet. And… youth. There was something indefinably younger about his image on this screen.

"Taking notes, Sarah Williams? After all, you're a woman. You know what it is to be an empty cunt. That's what humanity is, male or female. A series of fuckable holes." The King Over the World smiled mockingly. "And that's what young Jare'th made of himself. The goblins' delight, and humanity's whore."

"You're—" _You're wrong_ , she wanted to insist, but wasn't that a lie? She flushed with shame. Jareth had served her exquisitely when he'd played the role of the villain. She remembered his anger when he'd said, _"All I did was assume my proper role."_ Had it felt, for him, like a form of prostitution? To endlessly serve her desires? _"Everything you wanted I have done. You asked that the child be taken—I took him. You cowered before me—I was frightening."_ He'd seemed so angry with her, so indignant. And he'd had the right to be both. In the end, he'd been only one last obstacle to overcome. And he'd let her go when he hadn't had to. _"Please kiss me,"_ she'd said to him, on the stairs outside the Fairy Ring. _Humanity's whore_. The shame burned. Had she done wrong?

She watched the rape and felt her guilt. She could hear him, faintly punctuated breaths that were a denial of breath, and the rapist's love-song to him, made of grunts and curses and lying promises.

_Is this what the King Over the World makes him watch every time he comes here?_ She tried to imagine being forced to watch herself at her weakest and most anguished moments, and couldn't. The very idea was outrageous. "It's interesting," Sarah said, "To see what price a King will pay to ransom his Kingdom. Judith didn't scruple to lie down with Holofernes, or Esther with King Ahasuerus."

"Mortals all," scoffed John Company. "Birds through the hall. What's a few moments for you, when a mortal lifetime is only itself a moment? But we are fae. Fae understand the meaning of forever. And there's Jare'th, giving himself over to humanity's iron and salt and food and fuck. What a beautiful mess. What lessons he learned. His sex turned outward, turned into a weapon, like human men. No fae woman would have him, after this. No one to catch him up and pull him out of the endless ring of pain and being."

And he was flat against the floor, bruised and bleeding and broken-into, but closing his eyes on the world, and singing with wounded lips. She could hear his song.

_**The wind, the wind, you can't catch the wind.** _   
_**I am the wind and you'll never catch me.** _   
_**The moon is there, you can't reach the moon.** _   
_**I am the moon. I am above your reach.** _   
_**My name is yours, but it cannot be read.** _   
_**My body is here but my self is free.** _

_**You have no power over me.** _

_Free_ , she thought. _Yes_. She reached out and touched the screen, touched his face, and his image seemed to flinch, as though he could feel her.

_Fly_ , she thought. _Fly_. Her favour glowed at her wrist, and the monitor flickered and went out—but not before, in that one instant between on and off, an owl winged its way into the unknown darkness beyond the screen.

"You're wrong about that," she murmured, and turned to John Company. "There isn't no one. There's me." John Company snorted and turned his back to her.

Now would be the perfect time. She could end this just by lifting her hand and squeezing a tiny trigger. _Right in the center of your head. The peach pit. The occipital lobe, exiting out your throat. You won't have time to even scream_. Her fingers wrapped around the butt of her weapon, ready to draw, and aim, and fire.

"Concordat," John Company said casually, walking ahead of her into the strobing blue darkness. "Combat is prohibited here in the Observatory, and once you leave the Labyrinth you'll be back in my Kingdom and at my less than tender mercy. Don't pick fights you can't win. That was Jare'th's mistake." He walked further in, and she was forced to follow. She put a finger against Yimmil's mouth before following. The little goblin nodded, his eyes canny.

"This place is a blot, you know, this ridiculous vestibule, this Labyrinth. Untidy, messy. It will need to be incorporated. I keep offering Jare'th a buyout, and he keeps turning me down," he drawled. He turned and gave Sarah an unctuous wink. "Maybe new leadership is in order."

"I don't serve _you_ ," she said coldly.

"Oh but you do, dear heart! That's what makes this all so delicious. My name is stitched on your clothing. I make the food you eat and the entertainments you purchase. I buy and sell all of you, and you thank me for the privilege. In your own country, I am a legal entity. I'm the King of Winter, and I am in my prime. So why don't we just cut Jare'th and the Labyrinth out of the picture with the rest of the middle management, what say? Level this little refugee camp and split the profits. You're only human. You can't be arrogant enough to think you've got it in you to hold out against me."

"That's your opinion," Sarah said confidently, but her heart was shuddering strangely under her ribs. She deeply disliked the tone of this conversation. The King of Winter's words had the ring of truth. She didn't like to be reminded that Jareth was still a prisoner, somewhere in the Labyrinth, and even less to know that the King Over the World ( _Antichrist_ , her mind whispered to her. _Satan. Adversary_ ) was also the living embodiment of the corporation, the institution, the penitentiary.

It made her think of Foucault's Discipline and Punish, which she'd originally picked up thinking it would be a sexy exploration of the BDSM scene. _The institution was invented in the eighteenth century, during the Enlightenment_ , she remembered. _The corporate institution, whether military barracks, school, mental hospital, or prison had actually developed the modern concept of the soul by the process of imposed mechanical discipline and perpetual observation. Something about the nature of the human soul, both in sin and grace, is known by observing the human condition. The fae condition too, possibly. Jareth chose to become real, to awake, to be an actor, by being observed and acted upon. Beyond the abilities of his kind: desire, truth, and choice. The Pillars of the Underearth. The foundational power of the Labyrinth._ Whenever it had happened, four thousand years ago or forty, what Jareth had undergone had been his choice, had been necessary. And he'd chosen to kiss her. She'd left him the option of saying no. There was very little she'd refuse him _. He kissed_ me _,_ she thought.

_And this one,_ she thought, looking at the King of Winter. _This prisoner. Everything he's said about Jareth is actually about himself. He's hateful, and bound to his role_. Whatever Jareth faced to gain his power over the Labyrinth, this one had undergone something like it as well. _Linear_ , she thought. _Corporeal. Fixed_. And instead of trying to find some kinship or partnership with the world, this Faerie King Over the World had chosen to hate it and his own people. She shot John Company a perceptive glance and did some quick arithmetic.

"John Company," she said quietly. "You look very good for three hundred years old."

He paused and looked at her angrily. "I am much older than that, human woman."

Sarah smiled stiffly. "Perhaps. But your Kingship can't be older than three hundred years. I know you'd like me to think you're the Devil himself, or something that menacing. But you're just King Over the World, and all your subjects are here in boxes. In the Observatory. The Panopticon, as Foucault called it. You're a warden. A bureaucrat. And you're as much boxed up as the rest of the people you try to rule."

"Let me show you the use of boxes," Company said darkly, "and then you'll understand how ridiculous you sound to me. Here we are." He stopped before one screen, a garish gray wasteland of shambling bodies. "The zombies. I think it's just about time to release them. What do you say?"

Sarah crossed her arms and tried to remain calm.

"I'm about to cause a massive economic shift in the United States," the King of Winter said, pointing his phone at the screen and giving it a speculative look. "A recession, a collapse in the housing market, perhaps even a second Great Depression. The zombies were good before for the race wars. They'll keep you little people occupied instead of storming the ivory towers of your monied betters." He pressed a button on his phone, and a green countdown began on the screen. "Unless you object?"

"You're King Over the World," she said indifferently, but she was nervous, hoping he wasn't able to actually set these monsters, these prisoners, in motion in reality. Surely he was only able to let loose their form, their shape. _Surely it doesn't equate to the same thing_ , she thought. She'd worked long enough in the industry to know, know from her bones, that the visual pageants she helped to create did have an impact on the world, on the culture. But they were more than distractions or evasions. The symbolic monsters in the movies and on TV were also a way of dealing with problems too huge, too frightening to be dealt with in any other way. Monsters were always defeated, and their symbolic defeat on the silver screen was a reassurance that the fears they represented could be met and overcome in the same way.

_He has power_ , she thought. _But this Observatory is also part of the Labyrinth. And that means that Jareth has some power over these things, too. Errolan said my favour bound me to certain rules. Let's see if those rules include affecting the landscape._

She turned to the screens again, willing the pictures to stop. She felt her favour tingling on her wrist, tingling like an acidic kiss, and around her, one by one, the screens flared into snow and test-patterns. The sense of power made her smile. She'd felt something move out of her, that featherlight touch of magic laid over her soul, and whether it was her inheritance from the Labyrinth or Jareth's essence, or even something innate to herself, she didn't really care.

John Company frowned and pointed his phone at the hall of screens again, which slowly flickered back into light and clarity. But there were other images there now, and Sarah could see how even the most terrible fae-born monsters there all had their heroic counterparts, all had their heroes performing emulable feats of courage and compassion and self-sacrifice—and these heroes, they were fae too. She gave the King of Winter a triumphant smile. "Spring is inevitable."

"No, I'm afraid not. Jare'th was meant to be Prince of Spring, but failed his tests in his own particularly unique, stylish, and spectacular fashion. Funny, when he threw that party, I admit, he made me a bit nervous. Reminded me of the good old days, when we ate humanity directly instead of homogenized through a screen. Rather unsanitary habit, the Fairy Ring. But it was just a bit of beginner's luck, and ultimately nothing to be too worried about. He sold himself cheap, for this grotty little doorway, and I'll pull this place down brick by brick before I let any other fae try to succeed where he failed, and use it as a path to seize my throne."

Now it was Sarah's turn to laugh. It was a cold laugh, but a cheering one. "He did what he had to. I don't think he failed to take your throne. I think he succeeded in taking _his_. You're the one who's mistaken, John Company. Spring is already here. Your power is leaving the world. Hell, it's leaving from the very prisons you designed to keep it contained. Your reign is ending, not in spite of the prisoners you keep here, not in spite of our stories and our technology, but _because_ of them. The tighter you bind them, the easier they slip free. It's life. Life itself. It breaks free. It finds a way." She gave a brave half-smile. "That's a line from Jurassic Park," she informed him. "Objects in mirror are closer than they appear."

"Let me show you Jare'th's cage," said John Company, walking further into the blue strobing gloom.

There were doors now where there had been screens before, layers and layers upon iron doors and horrid cells. "Already I've set his mortal, immortal lover loose in his beloved Labyrinth. He'll be nothing but bones and regret by the time you reach him, begging for a death that will never come. Because I'll catch him up again, give him back to flesh and life, and give him back to my best servant to devour anew."

Sarah gaped for a moment, and then something became very clear to her. Her insides were alight with laughter, but her words were all rage. John Company turned and stared at her. She had to hold her face in her hands to keep from screaming with hysteria. "You dummy!" she said. "To think I made such a big deal out of you! I killed the Leviathan Worm! I stabbed him to pieces!" She remembered everything, and it seemed to make her catch fire, made her favour glow bright as cooking-oil flames in this darkness.

_"I was a mortal man who loved the Goblin King,"_ the Worm had said.

"I cooked him!" Sarah shouted. "Roasted him to ashes! And you'll never be able to use him against the King of the Labyrinth again!"

"You dare," the King of Winter hissed. Sarah took a step closer.

"I did. And if he shows his messed-up face a second time, I'll do for him a second time. A third. It would make my millennium. That's Beetlejuice."

"It doesn't matter. Nothing you do matters. You can't protect him forever. You're mortal. You're finite. One day he'll fall."

Sarah shook her head dismissively. "One day soon, you won't be King. Do what you have to to feel better about that." She bared her teeth, feeling sharp, feeling potent, feeling red in tooth and claw.

The King of Winter stopped before one door, a steel door with a reinforced glass panel, a door that looked like something from a mental institution, or a prison. A door that was open. She recognized the pale industrial tiles, and she could smell a stink of rotten fruit, old come, and vomit. "This was, and is, and will be Jare'th's room," he said coldly.

She looked into the unlocked cell. The key between her breasts seemed to grow warm, warm with potential, and she knew it was waiting to _lock_. Could she trick the King of Winter, the King Over the World? Did she have the nerve? _Yes_ , she thought, and forced herself to see a thing that wasn't there. Carefully, cruelly. "Oh my God," she said, rushing for the door. "His amulet! He left his amulet behind!" She tried to shove him aside, and on cue, like an actor perfectly rehearsed, John Company snarled and shoved her back and entered the room ahead of her. "It's mine!" he shouted. "I saw it first!"

Sarah slammed the door with a bang and bent with fumbling fingers, not even taking the time to remove it from her neck, the key on the thong. The key went in the door smoothly, as if oiled. And she turned it in the lock. The King of Winter gave a horrible cry and his face was at the reinforced glass of the observation window, snarling at her like a hungry lion.

"Cheater! Liar! Open this door!"

"No," Sarah said. "You can go where you like up and down the Earth where you rule. But here, Jareth's King of the Labyrinth, and if you're here, you're bound. Those are the rules!" She whinnied a hysterical laugh. "The rules I just made up. Fuck you."

"You think this will matter? Do you think your quest _matters_?" Sarah slipped the key back into her shirt, between her breasts. It felt warm. She smiled and turned to walk down the hall.

"You think to defy me by freeing him?" his voice shouted after her. "I _want_ you to free him!"

_Keep walking_ , she told herself. _Don't listen. He's the liar. He's the cheat_. As she carried herself away, the last she heard of the King of Winter was a dark and superior laugh.

* * *

"Don't like this place, Yes-Ma'am-Lady," Yimmil said sadly.

"I know. I don't either." They were deep in the bowels of the Observatory now, and Sarah was trying to remember directions from the glut of confusing information that Neringia, Rephaites, and Errolan had given her. The iron doors had given way to doors of stone, some propped up with other bolsters of stone, everything becoming more crudely and primitively worked the deeper she went. The doors came in threes, and she needed to always choose the third door that led downward. She used both her favour's light and the light from her tiny flashlight to see her way. "But I'm proud of you," she said. "You kept quiet and calm, and let me take care of things."

Finally there were no more doors, only one door, all made of a stone slab. She pressed hard against it, and then tried to fit her fingertips into the tiny gap and pull it open, but it wouldn't budge. She only succeeded in ripping off two of her nails and frustrating herself. "Open Sesame," she shouted. "Mellorn! Friend! Abracadabra!" But the door stayed obstinately closed. "God dammit to Hell!" she shrieked, kicking the stone, bruising her toes. She slumped down into a squat, taking the weight of her backpack over her spine. She was so tired, but there was no way she'd sleep in this place.

She stood up and ran her hands all along the edge of the door again. She didn't even know where the hinges were, and the surface of the stone was rough and uneven. Her seeking fingers found a narrow slot on the fourth pass, and she closed her eyes in denial and frustration. It was a lock. And she had a key that would open a door.

_No_ , she thought. _I won't waste it. I won't. There has to be some other way_.

After twenty minutes of internal debate, she took the key from around her neck and fitted it into the door. She felt the tines catch and turn on something. The door slowly shifted forward, and then began to rise into its lintel.

"No!" she shouted, pulling at the key's thong. The key was stuck in the lock, and now it was above her head, out of reach. She jumped up to try to grab it. Slowly, as slowly as it had risen, the door began to slide back down again. Angry enough to cry, Sarah tried one more time to grab the key, and then acknowledged it would be no use. She'd been impatient, and selfish, and proud, and she was going to lose that key or be stuck in the Observatory behind a stone door, with John Company, his prisoners, and God knew what else. Hating herself, she grabbed Yimmil and rolled through the narrowing portal as it slid shut behind her.

She had exited the Observatory, but the magic key was on the wrong side of the door.

She jumped up and down and screamed in frustration, sending murders of crows calling raucously up and down the night-dark mountain in dismay.

* * *

_Well, was the King Over the World everything you'd hoped? I admit, I found considerable inspiration for John Company, King (or CEO) of Winter in Andrew Scott's portrayal of Jim Moriarty from Sherlock. So much gleeful malice. So much evil in one skin._

_The Joker, the Skin Man, and the Beldam are the property of their respective owners, and you can observe them in the Batman canon, in Pan's Labyrinth, and in Coraline.  
_

* * *

 

_**Next... Chapter 14: "Visions and Elisions"  
** _


	14. Visions and Elisions I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Soundtrack for Chapter 14:
> 
> "Who? Where? Why?"—Jesus Jones  
> "Dead Man Walking"—David Bowie  
> "A Kind of Magic"—Queen

**Visions and Elisions**   
  


* * *

He launched himself into the air and he was an owl, pure as pain, white as grace, winging free to meet the sky. Oh, the joy of _flight_. Freedom was in every beat of his wings. He adored the lightness in his bones, the strength of his body, thinking predator's thoughts, wild thoughts, joy-thoughts. _Up. Up. Up_. All above it, free, everything in his view.

There was a silver feather on his breast that pricked him, like a thorn. _No matter_ , he thought, _it's only_ her _, and she may be mortal, but she is also small, and intends no harm_. Still, something about against him, against his heart, so close to him, irked him. Her quill pierced him, reminded him of other hurts, reminded him of…reminded him of… _No_ , he thought. _No. I will rip her out if I must_. He was pleased by the idea of hurting her even as he wanted to cherish her, and to show her everything he could do, cruelty and tenderness and vanity in one delicious draught. His heartbeat thrummed a series of echoes in his chest. Together they glided over his Labyrinth, which in this dream was nothing more than a series of translucent corridors and passageways between what was, and what was not. This time would be different. Silver feathers or white, this time he would escape. He would fly…

And he felt a sudden jerk, a tumbling and a whirling through space, as something caught him. It was a hand, an iron hand, that coiled tight, like a serpent, and latched onto his leg like a jess. _No_ , he thought angrily. _This time you will not keep me!_ Anger, and fear. How dare any bit of humanity touch him, dare interrupt him, dare to take away his freedom? He fought the grasping worm with talons and beak, but could not fly free. And that grasp drew him down to the earth, down to flesh, down to a place of perpetual imprisonment and pain. _Never to fly again?_ He shrieked the owl's banshee cry. _Let me go. Let me go!_ The hand wasn't a hand, it was the worm, coiling around his leg and his belly, binding him to the earth.

"I want you," said the one who pulled him down. "I will have you, and I will keep you. For you are beautiful, and you are mine."

"Jareth, Jareth," said the feather, the little silver feather. He hissed at her and fought her too, one known and new hurt among many grown dull from experience. She was... She was much larger than him. _Sarah?_ he thought. _No. No, Sarah, don't look_. But she was Sarah, and she was holding his owl-body carefully, trying not to hurt him. Her clever fingers unlooped one coil, and then another, and he let out low cries when her touch hurt him. He stopped slashing out at her, even though her touch was agony. _Unmerciful God, let me close my eyes on the world_ , he thought. _I don't want her to see this_.

He felt her stop in horror when she saw. The lengthy viscous length that was binding him to the ground wasn't a hand and it wasn't a worm. It was his own viscera, which spilled forth from a terrible wound in his owl's belly, tethering him to the ground.

"How do I fix this?" she was asking him, and it took him a moment to understand she was speaking in English, speaking to him with her conscious mind, that she was sharing his dream this time, and aware of sharing it. Her voice shook with horror. "How can I fix this?" But he could see that she could see that this was a wound too deep and evil to be healed.

"Stop!" he commanded, and stepped away from her, out of her gentle, kind, hurt-bringing hands. "Be quiet. You're too loud." He put his hands over his face, no longer in owl-form, but man-form, the extruded pieces of himself back in their proper place, the form that contained him—he looked up, between his fingers. Her face held his pain, and her tender flesh made his own feel less hateful. She was so beautiful. So human. So dangerous. She was all made of stars and green.

"This is your dream," she said suddenly, with one of those flashes of understanding that always surprised him with their uncanny accuracy. "I can hear you. I'm inside your head."

"Yes," he said, wrapping his feather-cloak around him, wishing he could wrap a layer between the two of them as well, not be so nakedly exposed to her view. Her eyes made him uncomfortable. "I don't want you here." He gasped a sigh.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't—I don't know how to leave." She looked so remorseful that he was tempted to forgive her.

"Just go. Go!" He shoved her, hard.

She looked surprised, and upset, but he didn't care. "I'll come to you," he spat, trying to control his temper, and not succeeding very well. He forced himself to be calm. "I'll come to you," he said. "I prefer it that way."

"Your place or mine, eh, Goblin King?" Sarah said, smiling slightly.

He nodded, not trusting language at all anymore. How dare she be so flippant, when he'd just lashed out at her? It was cruel that she could delight him, cruel that she could make him smile even in the middle of his despair.

"Close your eyes," he murmured, in the half-language of dreams. "Go. And I'll come to you."

He felt her consciousness slip away from him, the unclasping of hands in the dark. Her trust in him was astonishing. Her choice to trust, that was what was truly astonishing. Even knowing what he couldn't hide from her… that he would hurt her, inevitably. That he would do anything, to be free.

He would do anything. Even give her a wound as deep as his, and never feel remorse.

* * *

She opened her eyes with a start. Night, in the Labyrinth.

"Jareth," she gasped, arms reaching out to him, and coming away empty.

_Am I awake or am I asleep?_ she wondered. The space between dreams and reality was incredibly porous here, in the Labyrinth, near Jareth. But she was where she'd fallen asleep, at the exit of the Observatory, near the base of the mountain.

There had been a long low stone slab and a long-disused fire pit and a stack of ancient glitter-coated firewood. She'd been glad to find this space, too tired to have tried to look for anything better, and started the fire going with an ancient tinder-box near the stack of wood—more for a sense of comfort and security than any need to hold off the cold. Yimmil was sleeping a few feet from the snapping flames, and she'd taken the slab as a sleeping-place, using her green jacket and the straps of her pack as a pillow.

She shifted carefully on the stone, feeling every ache from the day, not knowing if she ought to try to move deeper into sleep or move out of it. She stared up into the starless sky.

_Jareth_ , she thought.

He moved out of the shadows of the mountain and across to the fire, his jacket and pants and shirt all in shades of gray and slate-blue and black, his narrow cloak glistening like mica, and put another piece of wood on the fire. He was armored, armored against her in cloth and clothes and cloak, gloves tight against his hands, collar high against his throat. "I'm here," he said, his face lighting up in the renewed fire. He saw Yimmil, and for one moment she thought he might use one polished boot to kick the little goblin into the burning coals. But instead Jareth put one tender hand over the goblin's fur, and tucked the t-shirt Sarah had given him as a blanket tighter around his little body.

"He may be stupid, but you're right, Sarah. He is loyal." Jareth looked over at her.

Sarah lifted herself upright. _How different he looks_ , she thought to herself. In his dream, that dream where she'd trespassed all unknowing, his face and chest had been dirty, filthy with mud and sand and the marks of scratches and injuries, his nails broken, hair long and sweat-soaked and tangled, his pants patched and darned and ancient. If he were capable of growing a beard, Sarah decided, it would have been as long and abandoned as the Count of Monte Cristo's after escaping the Chateau d'If. But apparently fae men didn't grow hair on their faces, or at least Jareth didn't. He had looked every inch a prisoner. Even his owl-feather cloak had looked as threadbare and molted as a cobweb tangle. The scar on his cheek, the one Finnvah had given him, was faded now to a faint line that was more imagined than visible. Only his amulet had looked clean and fresh, winking out like a golden star against his skin.

And now he looked immaculate, beautiful, and approachable as starlight.

"Jareth," she said. I am so sorry for what happened to you."

He stared into the fire for a long time. "Why should I be afraid to receive what it was my pleasure to mete out?" he finally murmured to the flames. "I raped. I ravished. I murdered. I committed every sin there is to commit on humanity. I sent madness and blight. Why should any of that, returned to me, cause me any lasting grief? In any case, it was long ago, and I've had my revenge and more."

"That was different," Sarah insisted, sitting up and rubbing her face. "You couldn't understand what you were doing, before you became King. You didn't have a choice between right and wrong."

"You don't know what you're talking about," and now there was a hint of anger in his voice. "I don't want your forgiveness or your pity. Your unreasonable fondness for me is only one more weight to carry."

"Tough," Sarah said, but her voice was gentle. "You've got it anyway."

He looked at her. There was no affection in his gaze, only the look of a man with a particularly challenging and illogical puzzle to solve. She reached out her left hand to him, beckoning. He took her favour and her hand between both of his own, smoothing it down, pressing her palm to his face. They sighed together, as if the touch were a mutual balm.

"I suppose I ought to express gratitude," he said stiffly, his face closed, the topic of forgiveness closed. "You're doing very well by me. Fighting my enemies for me. Protecting me. Becoming the fulcrum around which order is coming together in the Labyrinth. What would you like in exchange for your work so far?"

"I have questions," she said. "I need answers."

"I'm sure you do. But if I could make a request before you ask your questions?" He tilted his head and raised an eyebrow. Sarah nodded loftily. "I know where you've been, and I have some idea of what you've seen. Privacy is the one luxury I've rarely had in my long, long life. If I refuse to answer some of your questions, and if I can't answer others, will you take it in good grace?"

"Oh. Mmmh." She grumbled. "Yes," she said grudgingly, "But you're making it very hard for me to help you."

"Oh I know," he said brightly, as if her exasperation were tremendously cheering to him. "Why on Earth or Under should I make it easy for you?" He sat down next to her, wrapping the edge of his ivory-sequined cloak around her shoulders.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"Obviously, I'm distracting you. I hate answering questions. Come closer to me."

She moved a half-inch closer, smelling his heady scent, feeling his warmth, his desire, and sensing his delight in something so trivial and important as flirtation. "Is this something you want to do, or is it something you have to do, because I want it?" _Because I saw the worm steal from you, and I don't want to be like him._ He pulled the edge of his cloak a half-inch tighter around his fist, drawing her a half-inch closer, so that they were almost touching.

"The stolen coin is not debased by its theft, Sarah. And you didn't steal anything from me. You _asked_. I gave. I don't resent the giving. To the contrary."

"But he hurt you," she said, and she felt very cold, even with him so near and so warm.

"He was himself. You are _you_. If he'd been capable of asking, I would have been glad to give him anything he'd wanted. Circumstances conspired to ensure he was not." He looked at her coldly, and traced his gloved fingertip over her eyebrow. "It took me a long time to realize that. I hated humanity for what was done to me, during my trials. But you helped me remember that not all people are walking filth. You're your father's daughter."

"You knew my father?" she asked in surprise. He laughed and wound his cloak another quarter-turn around his hand, so that their shoulders touched.

"Yes, briefly. A good man. With beautiful children. How is your baby brother, by the way? He must be talking by now."

"He talks a lot," Sarah said, bemused. "He's a sophomore in college. Or he will be this Fall. What would you have done with him if I'd lost at your game?"

"No," Jareth said, smiling, denying her the question. He winched his hand around the jewel-fabric once more, and pulled her even closer, so that the curve of her breast burned against his chest. She gasped as his free hand came around her back, pressed against her waist. "Answer me a question," he murmured. "You'll see how it feels to be interrogated by someone you can't lie to. When I stole your baby brother—"

"When I gave him away," Sarah corrected, "When I threw him away like he was garbage." Jareth's expression skewed between reprimand and respect.

"Yes, he said, "But when you realized what you'd done, and pleaded with me to give him back, were you thinking about the baby or were you thinking about how much trouble you'd be in with your father and stepmother for losing him?" He smiled narrowly, and Sarah felt embarrassed, naked and exposed. It wasn't that she was incapable of lying to him, it was that the thought of lying to him seemed repugnant and unsuitable.

"Both," she said honestly. "But much more worried about Toby than about being in trouble. Being in trouble never bothered me much. I've always had a healthy disrespect for authority." She took the opportunity of an honest answer to look Jareth in the face. She reached out a hand to touch him, the strange pale flesh above his eyes, the darker markings like the memories of old wounds by his eyebrows. He deflected her hand with a strange motion of his wrist, but smiled at her even so.

"Will you tell me," she asked, "the nature of the curse you're under? Does it have something to do with paying the Teind?"

"No. Yes." His cloak was a net, drawing her in like a helpless fish, rolling up easily over his arm. She sighed in the twin frustrations of denied lust and logic, and it was either break in half or move onto his lap, undignified and fantastic as the prospect seemed. _Like a bitch in heat_ , she thought ruefully, but gave up as little as she could in the process, enjoying this game as much as he apparently was. "Please," she said, as he lifted her onto his lap. "Stop distracting me!" she whined, even as her arms went around his slim torso, having nowhere else to go.

"No," he said. "Teasing you is the most fun I've had this last decade." She tried to hop down, but he held her firmly atop him. "It's almost like old times. Tell me, Sarah. When I promised to be your slave if you would fear me and love me and do as I said, were you tempted at all?" His gloved hand splayed out across her breastbone, just where her amulet would hang, if she hand one.

"No," Sarah admitted, resisting the urge to press tighter against him. "That was the endgame. I was barely paying attention to you. I was done screwing around. It was time to win." He managed to look both insulted and gratified. "Anyway, I don't want you to be my slave." She looked at him solemnly.

"Don't you?" he said, smiling a challenge. "Even when I've made you mine?"

"Don't be ridiculous," she said, ignoring the goad. "The King Over the World said you could have been the Prince of Spring," Sarah said. "Why aren't you?" _Two can play the tease_ , she thought. _You'll tell me the truth, but maybe you'll tell more of it if I do_ this. She ran her fingers up his back, tickling against his ribs, over his thin shirt.

"There were too many of us trapped in Winter's ice, and too many of us too scattered or discorporate to turn the wheel of the seasons. I didn't even try. I—damn you for a minx." He shuddered under her touch. _He's ticklish_ , Sarah thought, grinning, and didn't stop. "Go on," she said. "Don't mind me. If I free you, will you be Prince of Spring then?"

He tried to give her a stern look, but had to close his eyes until she quit and began caressing his back instead. "No. The time for that has come and gone. The Prince of Spring will have to come out of the new People."

"Hold up," Sarah said. "Finnvah's one of them. Who are these new People? New fae?"

He gave her an evaluating look, as if deciding if he wanted to tell her or not. Finally he nodded. "There are many who followed, or who will follow, my example, and give themselves to flesh and life. They won't be of my own race, or of yours, but admixtures. An entire generation who will have the best qualities of my people and yours in common." He caught her up under the neck and shoulders and cradled her in his embrace. "Some misguided fae, by accident or design, caused the goblins to come to be, or the dryads, or the trolls or the elves, and every other category of supernatural faerie being from the specific to the general. My contribution is the germination of young Finnvarrah's race, the new People. They'll vex the King Over the World endlessly, and there's some measure of victory in that."

She found herself relaxing in his arms, her body feeling better than it had in weeks. He made her feel drowsy, languid, yet strangely alert. The honey-sweetness of him was like a drug. She felt like crying from the ache of a wish fulfilled, being in his arms, and him wanting her there. "Are you Finnvarrah's father?" she asked. _Not that it matters to me, but I have to know_.

"No," his voice was a stone dropped in heavy water. He rocked her slowly. "You understand that we are two different races of people, Sarah? Some of us make enthusiastic attempts, but we can't engender offspring. The union would be sterile. The fae are the bees of Creation, not the pollen or the flower or the bud."

"Bees make honey," she protested, giving only a little resistance as he caressed her face and her favour with his gloves.

"Sweetness, signifying nothing," he said. Something in his expression was very sad when he said this, and her instinct was to comfort him.

"But in the story of Tam-Lin—" Sarah contradicted, but Jareth interrupted her.

"Tam-Lin was a mortal man before the Faerie Queen abducted him. I'm not a mortal man. I'm fae. I'm fae, and anyway, that story was only one more of Winter's lies." His tone was angry but his touch was gentle, his left hand tickling down her body so that she shuddered.

_Yes_ , she thought rebelliously, _you're fae but that's not all you are. You eat, you sleep, you dream. You live. You're an individual, not a collection of appetites. You're the face, and not the mask_.

"Is there a time limit?" she murmured. "To set you free? Do I need to collect any items or ingredients?" He pulled her slowly closer. _It's so funny. I've grown taller and he's stayed the same, but I feel small as a child in his arms. He's so strong._ He lowered her gently down to the slab, and eased down on his side next to her, and covered them both with his cloak of mica.

"Nothing is required but you, Sarah. If your instincts tell you you'll need something, bring it with you. All I need from you are unfinished tasks to be performed. And one last door to open to free me. Look at me," he commanded, running his left hand down her body, over her hair, down her neck, along the weight of her breast, and to her thigh, where it came to rest. He bent his face to hers. "I need you to swear, by ashes and iron, that you'll open that door."

_Why wouldn't I? Why won't you trust me? You don't have to pay me in kisses and caresses to have your way._ She squirmed, wondering if this were a spell she was under. _You're so beautiful, any woman would be glad to_ die _for you. Freeing you is such a small thing._

He was waiting for her to answer in words. "I swear it," she said. Knowing now he could hear her more obvious thoughts in her dream as easily as she'd heard his in his dream, she thought _, I swear so long as I'm the only one who gets hurt_.

"Yes, add whatever fine print you want so long as you _do_ it. Have you had your fill of interrogating me? Or must I beg for you to kiss me?"

"You could ask," Sarah said, nuzzling against his neck. "Ask nicely."

"Haven't I been asking?" he said imperiously. "Haven't I been, all this time?" He took her face in his hands, and took what she was glad to offer.

The fire was burning very, very low by the time they'd investigated a nearly complete catalog of kisses, and her mouth was pleasantly sore, her lightly-caressed body aching in his embrace. And while the kissing excited her, Jareth seemed to hold himself at a strange distance, giving but somehow unmoved. He was warm beside her, but not ardent, hungry, but not starved. "If kissing is all you want," she said muzzily, "That's fine with me. I know it helps you. Feeds you. If that's all you want."

"A meal of your desires deferred? That's a terrible temptation to a gourmet, Sarah." His hands stroked her gently, a whisper of feeling that was somehow sweeter, and more profound, than any other embrace from a more passionate partner. She felt a stab of dismay, because she wanted him so badly… but she also needed, after what she'd observed of his past experience, not to ask for more than he might want to give. _Even though he looks fine now_ , she thought, _I remember his dream, being caught, unable to get free. I want him to be able to say no and be heard. Even if it's to me. I won't make him my slave, or my whore._

"I'm at your service," she breathed. "You don't have to give me anything you don't want to." _I don't play games with other people's money._  
  
"Very well," he said. "I'll take the lead in this little dance." He stroked her hair. "Your romantic attention is an immense comfort to me, Sarah, just so you understand. I find I look forward to these little trysts. You're very sweet when you want to be. Very pliant. Very giving."

"And you're very nice when you're not playing the villain," she returned.

"What do I taste like to you?" she said coquettishly, tracing her fingers just under the edge of his shirt, against his chest, expecting a compliment.

"Roast chicken," Jareth said, after a little hesitation, smacking his lips. "With rosemary."

Her mouth opened, insulted and horrified. "What?"

He dipped to capture her lower lip and sucked it hungrily, chuckling. "My plump little hen."

_Plump hen!_ She punched his shoulder but couldn't work up an angry retort, because her mouth was occupied with his. She broke it off and shoved him again, sitting up. "Do I really?"

"No." His mouth quirked up in naughty amusement. He sat up beside her, hooking a leg around her hips, keeping her contained. "But I need to divert you. I've decided you need a few basic lessons in my magic. You're starting to manifest some strong abilities. Do you know you almost ripped my amulet away from me while you were in the Observatory? And walked directly into my dream tonight? You _must_ learn. And instead of listening respectfully to my every word, which I seem to remember was the greater part of your fantasies, you're taking liberties with my tender and vulnerable person."

She raised a hand to smack him again, but he grabbed her wrist, rubbing his thumb over her favour. "Ah-ah. Naughty girl. Strike me a blow again and I'll return it to you over my knee." He darted forward and kissed her lips again before she could yell at him.

"Quite finished?" She gave him a defiant look, but said nothing. "Good," he said, satisfied.

"Will it… "she hesitated and searched his face. "Will it change me, learning magic?"

"It might," he said. "This kind of power isn't without risk. You may discover appetites and desires within yourself that may seem repugnant, or immoral."

"What, like for asparagus? Or voting Republican?" She laid a trail of kisses down his throat, his open shirt, down to his breastbone.

"Fae desires. A desire for power, to be a law unto yourself, to—" She planted a kiss on the center of his amulet. His entire body went rigid, and he let out a gasp and breathed more quickly, and pressed his hands over her head.

"Do that again," he whispered, full of aching need.

She tilted her chin so she could look at him, and he grasped two handfuls of her hair, not enough to hurt, but enough to keep her from moving too far away. She watched him watch her as she planted a devout kiss on his amulet again, and, daring, took one of the tines into her mouth so that the barb pricked under her tongue.

"Gods be good," Jareth moaned, his neck arching, as if she had another more juicy piece of his anatomy in her mouth. He surged up against her, and she sucked the tine out between her lips.

"More?" she whispered, smiling at him.

It took him a moment to recover, letting go of her hair with slow reluctance. "No, you precious brat. Listen. I'm asking to teach you something that other human beings have sold their souls to learn, and all you can do is torment me."

"Says His Majesty, King of Tease," Sarah pouted. "Okay. Fine. Whatever you want. Teach away." She climbed down and slipped her shoes on, and added another piece of wood to the embers. He eased off the slab like a ripple of oil and joined her.

"Now as I was saying, before your relentless sex-drive interrupted my train of thought. Magic. You need to learn, so no more of your kissing nonsense tonight." He gave her an arch look, as if the kissing were all being done on her side, and she smirked back.

He drew his fingers together in midair in a pinching motion. "The first magic is to name a thing, but before you can name a thing, you must see a thing. Hold it tight in your mind." She copied his gesture with her left hand. "Press it down until you feel it push against you. Feel the life in the naming. Feel how it wants to be."

He realigned her hand, pressed her thumb inward until sinews popped. "Sloppy," he said. "Hold still." Sarah felt a cramp threatening the muscles of her palm, but she kept her hand steady. "Better," he said. "Now. Your eyes. Use one to look outward at what you've got in your hand, and one to look inward at what you want to—damned girl, aren't you listening?"

Her fingers had broken apart, spasming wide, and she rubbed her palm. "It hurts!" she protested.

"Try again!" he said, disgusted. "You're not thinking about learning, you're thinking 'Oh Jareth, take me in your arms and make me feel like a woman!'" he said in mocking falsetto. "This isn't the time for that. You need to pay attention."

Sarah glowered at him. "I was!" she said. She could tell by the aching in her palm that if he asked her to hold that gesture again her hand would cramp up even faster than before. "Maybe I'm not a bad student. Maybe you're a bad teacher!" She bent and unbent her fingers.

He pinched the bridge of his nose as if he were getting a tremendous headache. "Undoubtedly I am, but I'm the best you could hope for Above or Under. If you can't muster the real thing, please fake a little pedagogical respect?" He took her hand, but instead of forcing it to the configuration he wanted, he rubbed out the pain for her. "Now," he said, and moved to stand behind her, tucking his chin over her shoulder, "Let's see if it's easier this way." He ran his hand down her wrist and placed his fingers over hers, bending them inerrantly into the correct gesture. "Think of the thing you want. See it in your mind."

"What do I want?" she asked.

"Well, what do you need?" he said, irritably, but his free hand caressed her thigh in lasciviously slow pulses.

She had a thought, and concentrated on it.

"Hold it. Squeeze it down until it has no place to go but to you."

The air above her fingers stirred and flickered. "Good," he murmured. "Good. Draw it out. Keep it—" a crystal appeared, briefly, a malformed bubble, and then exploded with a puff of dust and glitter. Sarah sighed in frustration.

"No, no," Jareth said, voice tickling approval against her ear. "That was an excellent first attempt." She could feel his hips pressing against her spine, and without realizing what she was doing, a perfect crystal appeared above her fingers, heavy with promise, and full of an image of her lost key, trapped on the other side of the door out of the Observatory _._

"Very good." he said. "Now let's work with it." He lifted the crystal from her fingers, lifted it up, up, over her head between his index and middle finger, and twirled her around to face him. "Put your hands up, and do what mine do," he instructed. "Let's play," he smiled, delighted as a child.

"Why do we have to play with the crystal?" she asked, mirroring his hand positions. "Can't we just take what's inside it?" He manipulated the crystal from hand to hand, slowly so she could follow, with subtle bends and switches of his wrists and flicks of his fingertips. It was a very simple series of passes, she saw, deceptively simple as chords to Beatles songs, and as difficult.

"We play so the thing knows it's truly wanted. So it doesn't vanish. We're not trying to get something for nothing, Sarah. This isn't a Winter game of snatch-and-grab. We have to make it _want_ to be with us." His hands slipped under hers, bringing her into the playful game of tilt and turn and dance.

Trying to see it was no good, she realized. What was truly necessary was to feel it, to desire and want it, to understand and cherish the thing with the muscles of her body instead of the logic of her brain.

"Yes," he said, voice gentle with praise. "Just so. Now you try." The crystal was warm under her fingertips, and he guided her slowly as she clumsily tried to balance it in little hops from the front and back of her hand. It seemed to grow heavier, stickier in her hands as she worked it. When she attempted to pass the crystal to her right hand, she almost dropped it, but Jareth was there to catch it and tip it back into her palm without any break in its motion. On the third attempt, she moved the crystal to her right hand, and was rewarded by Jareth's hum of approval.

"Magic wants to move. It has inertia. Help it move." His hands danced with hers and they passed the crystal back and forth between them. "Channel it. Be a conduit for it. Send it where it wants to go." The crystal rolled up her arm in defiance of gravity, and his was there against hers to meet it, to channel it back down again. Hand to hand, fingertip to fingertip, palm to palm, they balanced the cheerfully restless orb. "Coax it to you. Want it. Seduce it." She laughed. It seemed so easy. She was exhilarated by the sense of freedom and control she felt, juggling the ball with him.

"I like this," she said.

"So do I," he intoned seductively. "Instructing you is more enjoyable than I'd imagined." The crystal bauble chased over them as their arms rose and fell together. "Now you alone. Don't drop it. Or I shall be quite put out." He moved back behind her. "Discipline yourself to the task, Sarah. Let's see how you cope with distractions."

She felt his gloves working at her hips. The crystal was restless against her body; it refused to stay still in her palms. She let it coil between her cupped hands, but it spiraled faster and faster.

"Give it a place to go," Jareth instructed her curtly. "Give it a path. Give it direction." She felt his hands on her waist, sliding over her shirt, tracing a path upward.

"What—"

"I said, don't drop it." His tone was stern. Those hands… those hands were cupping her breasts now, groping her, squeezing her.

_Oh God, oh God_ … she gripped the crystal tight between her palms, but it was slippery and light, and his _hands_ … he was grasping her cruelly, in just the way she liked to be touched, his fingers flickering over her risible, sensitive flesh. "You," he said, kissing her neck, "Are not paying attention to what you're doing." And the crystal popped out between her hands and ricocheted off a stone slab, where it shattered.

"Poor little kitten has lost her mittens," he said, giving her one last spiteful squeeze before he moved away from her, "And she shall have no pie."

"Oh, you bastard."

"Yes, yes, all the names in the book, sweet Sarah. Begin again. Call the crystal, and summon the key. Seduce it to you and I'll seduce _you_."

_Well_ , she thought, as she arched her fingers into the taxing first position, and felt his warmth came against her back, _There are worse educational incentives._  
  


* * *

**  
Next… Chapter 15: "Visions and Elisions II"**


	15. Visions and Elisions II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Soundtrack for Ch. 15
> 
> "Midnight City"—M83  
> "I Remember"—Deadmau5  
> "Only If For a Night"—Florence + The Machine

**Visions and Elisions II**

* * *

"Wake up, Yimmil. It's time for breakfast."

Yimmil rubbed his eyes with his grubby fists and threw back the t-shirt that had served as his blanket, and practically launched himself at the granola bar Sarah had unwrapped for him. She watched him eat with a feeling of contentedness, but wished, with all her might, for a greasy McDonald's breakfast and a cup of dirty burnt coffee. Others could sell their souls for magic; she'd settle for a deep fat fried something. Sarah chewed resentfully on the Cliff bar she'd reserved for herself.

The first magic lessons had gone well; she'd ended her nightly dalliance with Jareth with the key around her neck and a body sore and aching from unfulfilled lust. He played her flesh as easily as he'd played with the crystals she'd produced, but he had years, decades of experience to rely on, when it came to knowing her desires, and how to stop just short of gratifying them.

"Please stop," she'd said, gasping. He'd taken his hands off her; she'd unfolded her fingers from their deathgrip on the crystal, and there was the key in her palm. Her knees had buckled, and Jareth had bothered to catch her, ease her down. "Will I have to go through that every time I want something?" she'd asked him, closing her eyes, her sex-cardio breathing slowly easing down. "Because I don't know if I can do it."

He had laughed at her, coming to sit behind her, folding her in his arms. He was so sinewy it was a little like being hugged by a velvet-covered coatrack. "No," he said, taking the key on its thong from her stiff fingers and putting it over her head like a precious necklace. "But you said you were at my service."

He was still provocative, but the cruelty of his sexual teasing was tempered with an edge of good humor. As she ate, she considered that imprisonment, or cursing, had done wonders for Jareth's attitude. He was so much more patient, more giving, than she remembered him being at fourteen. _But what choice has he got, but to be patient?_ she thought, _And to accommodate me in every way possible? He's depending on me._

_And yet still. This time it goes both ways. This time, I'm getting to know him, too_. It wasn't just the shared dreams, or the conversations, or the caresses and kisses that refused to turn into more, no matter how much heat they generated between them. It was being back in the Labyrinth, looking at it, experiencing it, a form of intercourse that made sex seem trite. Everywhere she went, every path she took, willing or unwilling, she was finding him, evidence of his personality, his tastes and desires, his obligations and his secrets.

The path before her was still broad, with the illusion of choice, as if it were still all an open magical nature preserve. _Which, of course, I know it also is_. But she found herself wanting to be in the places where the paths began to narrow and spiral upon themselves, where choices came quickly and easily, and led to ways more direct.

She broke camp and murdered the campfire coals, and patted the spot on her backpack and Yimmil bounded up to his place. _I can't believe I'm actually going to carry him the entire way. Didn't I say something about walking before?_

She picked her way carefully down the steep mountain paths with Yimmil riding piggyback, practicing the primary hand positions as she went, trying to make her hands carry the memories and motions even while her mind was on different things. It was all about the memory of the flesh.

The memory of Jareth's arms around her, the warmth of him near her, the memory of her flesh, in a dream that was always so very real. He had pulled her exhausted and singing body against his, down between his thighs, so that her head rested against his knee. _Like a dog which has done a good trick_ , she thought, but couldn't summon any bitterness. She knew the affection that a master lavished on a dog was real.

"Yimmil," Sarah said. "Tell me about the King."

"King clever. King smart. King very good King. Always wanted to have him as King. Other goblins say, 'No, no, that not goblin, pay no attention.' But I always do. Watched him careful. Wanted to help him."

"So you were there when the King was up on the Earth, going through whatever it was I saw in the Observatory?"

"Yes," Yimmil said simply. "Semper Fi!" he shrieked.

_Oh, brother_ , Sarah thought, but had to smile all the same. "So did you help put him on the throne?"

"Helped make throne," Yimmil said. "Bone of a baku. Ate up bad dreams. King had bad dreams. On throne, King wasn't sad. Played with us. Sang to us. We miss him."

"There's the Chicken Prince," Sarah said.

"Not same thing, and you know it, Yes-Ma'am-Lady," Yimmil pouted. "I love King. Love him almost more than Yes-Ma'am-Lady. Chicken not the same at all. That's why I come. King never sad as much before Yes-Ma'am-Lady come then go. You will fix it." He patted her hair. "Bring King home."

"Tell me, what's it like to be the King of the Labyrinth?" she had asked Jareth, sitting in the fold of his legs, feeling pleased with her success in summoning the key.

"Lonely," he'd said. "Tell me what it's like to be a what-is-it you do, Sarah."

"Consulting Designer," she said. "I come in and arrange things. Sometimes I do assistant PD work. Production Design. I'm a fixer. I fix problems. Solve puzzles. Put things in order for other people. I come in around the edges and work odd hours. Try to make other people's work better. But I don't get to do original work. I'm not very good at it."

"Our roles are similar," he said, looking at her in empathy. "You were my first production in the Labyrinth," he admitted. "Though not my last."

"Oh?" she said, wrapping one finger around and around a long lock of his hair. "Tons of bratty teenage girls wishing their brothers away to the goblins?"

"Not as many as you might think," he said, flashing her an affectionate smile. "That's not exactly the way it goes. You understand by now that the Labyrinth isn't a fixed piece of geography? It's a psychic area. A state of mind. Rites of passage happen here, and people from both sides of the divide come here to remember what they've forgotten they already know. What they seek is intangible, and is rarely embodied in a baby." His expression darkened. "Fate designated that you would be the first human being to come here for a rite. I wasn't ready for the responsibility. I felt rather like a child who'd failed to prepare for an important test. It was one I'd failed before. And I was very aggravated at you for pulling me out of my lazy and self-indulgent rut and forcing me to be King." He carefully unwound her finger from his hair and began to play with hers. She caught up his hand and stripped his gloves off, which he allowed with fond condescension and pleased surprise.

"Mmm," she agreed, barely acknowledging his words, but marking them in her memory. Those taloned fingers were so clever, so quick, and he braided and unbraided locks of her hair with one hand. His grip tickled and tugged her scalp. It felt very good.

"I'm rarely needed," he said. "I'm almost never required to involve myself directly in the rituals that transpire here. Which is for the best, considering that I'm not currently in a position to involve myself."

"I needed you," Sarah murmured.

"Yes," he breathed. "It's impossible for me to hide from you. You see things that others don't see they don't see. And you see everything, except what you don't see that you don't see."

Sarah shifted her body stared out into the fire. "I love you, you know." It was barely a whisper. "I don't know why. Maybe I'm under a spell. Your spell. But I love you. Just the same." She was glad she couldn't see his face. She didn't want to see him. It was enough to say it.

His hands, petting the tangled fur of her hair, paused. "Yes," he said in an unreadable tone. "Forgive me, Sarah. If I were capable of love, that would make me very happy. As it is…" his hands curled and uncurled over her scalp. "I find you pleasantly fascinating. And I don't dislike you."

She took a breath to speak and she felt him freeze, as if steeling himself against a verbal attack. She only rubbed her face against his pants, enjoying the soft-scratchy texture of the fabric, and the smell of him. "Maybe you'll change your mind," she said quietly. "Or you won't. It doesn't matter. I just wanted you to know. I've never felt this way about anybody. Ever."

"Be very careful," he said, and she could detect a note of something— _Fear? Caution?_ —in his voice this time. "Human beings find the fae extremely… provocative. We can't help it. We naturally arouse the emotions which are our meat and drink. If I could turn it off for you, I would. Make myself ugly. Detestable to you. But I was never very good at glamours."

"Or at lying," Sarah said, shifting very slightly, making herself more comfortable. "I've never caught you in a lie. Anyway, you couldn't make me hate you."

"Couldn't I?" he said, turning her over as easily as he might have rolled a sausage off a plate. He looked down at her and bent one knee over to imprison her thighs. He bent over her, impossibly low, his hands cruel now in her hair, keeping her still. "I can read you like a book, Sarah. At night, when I see you, when I have you in my eyes." Those strange eyes were looking into hers now, boring into her soul. She couldn't breathe. Darkness and day, he penetrated her with his implacable gaze.

"I know everything. I know the risks you take because you believe I'm standing very near you, protecting you, like a talisman all made of Love. But don't mistake me for your guardian angel. I'm not there. You are alone. I need you, but I don't love you."

She looked into his eyes then, forced herself past his anger and cruel words, and tried to see inside him.

_A woman in a white kimono knelt before her desk in the dark, holding her sleeve carefully away from her brush with one hand as she traced dancing perfect characters down the white paper with the other. Her hair was black and silky as ink; her dress was as white as rice-paper, her belly round with an unborn child. The full moon shone in through the open window, illuminating her. The moon had a face; the face was Jareth's. He shone in on her with all his light, but his face was sad, sad. If she would just turn her face a quarter-inch, she would see him. But she didn't turn, didn't acknowledge his light that made the writing possible._

Something in the bend of the woman's neck, the angle of her cheekbones, the cutting shape of her eyes made her see Finnvah.

Finnvah's mother _, she thought._ Oh. Oh, Finnvah. Is Jareth your father, after all? _She watched, heart twisting in empathetic grief, expecting the shadow of the moon to embrace the woman, make love to her, plant Finnvah inside her. But instead Jareth uncurled a bright flame from his hand and set it inside the porcelain lamp of her body, the sleeping fetus inside her._

Sweet Robin _, he said to her._ All I can offer you is to have back the soul of the man you loved, made flesh again. For I have no name but the name you'd give me, and I have no fire but the fire I may reflect into you _. The woman didn't even see the light of his face any more, but the face of a dead lover, a face that was a mask of iron covering over Jareth's face, and dimming his light into the darkness of memory and mortality._

"Stop!" he said, closing his eyes, covering them again with one hand. "You awful girl." His breath shuddered in his body. "I can't love you, but I could hate you. I could hate you for this." His hands crushed to his face as if he were trying to tear his sorrow in two pieces. "You see too much."

"Who was she?" Sarah asked gently. "Who was Robin Zakar?" _Robin Zakar, the author of_ _The Labyrinth_ _, the one who knew enough about you to put your words in the Red Book, Jareth. Who was she?_

He was quiet for some time, and then he splayed his hand out over her face, hiding her eyes. His voice seemed to echo around the mountaintops, coming down from everywhere, loud as a scream but quieter than the snapping of the wood under flames.

"Robin Zakar was my first great work." There was a hiss and a sigh, as if the bones of the Labyrinth were shifting around them.

"We were… prisoners together, above in the ugliness of the human world. I saw how they degraded her, and it made me rage against my own humiliation. She woke me up. She wrote my words. I thought if I could set her free, I wouldn't hurt so badly in my own captivity. And I succeeded. I succeeded so well that she forgot me. There was a time when she needed me, and I abandoned her. And she returned the favor. When I needed her, she abandoned _me_. That's all I know of love. It's cruel, and it's hollow, a starving hunger that can never be fed full. So love me, by all means, Sarah, and starve yourself to death like an anorexic teenager. It's all one to me. It's all the same to me. But it would be better for you if you'd never thought to love me."

Sarah waited before pulling his hand away from her face. She saw his anguish and his guilt, and it amazed her that so much pain wasn't being washed by tears, but his face was dry. "Did you intend harm?" she asked, quietly.

"No," he said, like a moan.

"Jareth. You loved her. You must have." She held his hand in hers, tightly. "That's what love is. You think more about what the other person needs than what you want for yourself. Even if it hurts."

His face cleared, became the imperious mask of the King. "And you love me."

"Yes. I love you. I've said it." And this time it hurt to say it. It hurt.

He was so near to her, and yet so distant. So cold. "Good. Then I won't worry whether you'll do what I need you to." His lips touched hers. "You still want me, even though I'm cruel?" he mocked her. "I need to kiss you now. And I need the taste of me to be bitter in your mouth. You say love? I say poison." And his kisses pierced her like a knife, burning with cold, but she warmed his mouth with hers. _I am as strong as you_ , she thought. _Say poison. Be cruel_ , she dared him, running her hands over the hard angles of his face. She darted her tongue between his lips. _My heart is warm where yours is cold, and my love is as strong as death_.

As she picked her way carefully down the steep mountain paths, hands flashing in lesson-gestures, she began to understand what he had meant when he'd said any romantic involvement between them would end in tears. She hurt, but couldn't go back on her decision to love him. "What's said is _said_ ," she said to herself as she followed the narrow path downward, imitating Jareth at his bombastic best. It was true. And she was getting some inkling now that the more she cared about him, the worse he would hurt her.

_But he cares that he hurts me_ , she reminded herself. _And that's something_. Sarah knew about hurting people, and about caring whether the person was hurt or not. Wishing away Toby hadn't been the half of what she was capable of, in terms of cruelty. She loved Toby more than anyone else in the world, and she hadn't been above shouting at him, pinching him, or teasing him when he irritated her. Even after the Labyrinth. He was the most precious person to her in the whole world, and she could still be cruel to him.

She'd chosen, very carefully, never to have children of her own for that reason. She knew she had enough of Linda in her to be a terrible mother, and the idea of putting a child of her own through the agony Linda had put her through…

_She's dead, though_ , Sarah thought, trying to harden her feelings. _Five years dead. That wretched, selfish bitch. Better to have no child than to be impatient, angry, spiteful, neglectful, or selfish to one_. The best gift Sarah could think to give her child was never to let it be born at all. She didn't trust herself to raise a child. What she wanted was for Toby to grow up quickly, find a nice girl, and have a handful of fat babies for her to auntie. She didn't mind children. She just didn't want any of her own. It was too much to ask.

She'd been pregnant once, at twenty-seven, involved in a two-year relationship with a very good man. She'd gone ahead and had the abortion almost as quickly as she could, without consulting him. When the relationship ended—acrimoniously, and in tears and anger—she'd given him a final smack with the blunt end of that information. All of her subsequent romantic entanglements seemed to have a half-life of the one previous. Despite their feminist leanings, most of her few female friends had been scandalized when they'd found out about the abortion. They seemed to consider pregnancy and childbirth some sort of ultimate gift of themselves to their future husbands, God, and the world. To Sarah, the entire concept seemed humiliating, disgusting, and obscene. Emotional relationships with adults were trying and strange, but at least fair. An adult could walk away. A child couldn't.

And love could be terrible, Sarah knew. She knew it could be bitter poison. She had learned her mother's last lesson very well. It had grown over her like a crystal encasement, layer by layer as she withdrew from the increasingly more slim opportunities to try to love people who would inevitably hurt her.

_Jareth_ , she thought. _You're my last shake of the dice_. _You're the very last try I have in me, before I give up on love forever. It doesn't matter what happens after you, because my heart will be too cold to beat anymore, once you're done with it_. And the thought was a relief. To be done with love. Relief. Maybe she could be kinder to future romantic partners if her heart were dead.

_Dead like Jareth's_? she wondered.

"Stop!" Yimmil commanded.

They had come down the last broad stairs of the final corskcrewing path they'd taken off the mountain. Sarah stopped, and looked. There were three doors set here, at the end of the trail, three and only three, made of rough-shaped splintery wood.

"Which way should we choose, Yimmil?"

"Dunno, Yes-Ma'am-Lady," Yimmil replied.

_I've got to be careful in my choices. There's all the time in the world. There's no time at all._  
  
She raised her fingers to the first position, the summoning position for the crystal.

_What would be a good thing to have?_ she wondered. _A compass_ , she decided. _A compass that points the shortest way to Jareth._ She closed her eyes again and tried to imagine what that compass would look like. It would be an owl, she decided. A little barn owl, all made of white-painted tin, one that flew near her, one that always seemed to be flying toward its counterpart. She opened her eyes and drew her hand up into the correct posture.

Nothing.

She tried again.

Still nothing. Apparently this magic business was easier in her dreams. She closed her eyes and concentrated, trying to imagine that Jareth was still there with her, guiding her, helping her.

An orb flimsy as a soap-bubble burst above her fingertips.

"Nuts," Sarah said, snapping her fingers.

"Lunch break?" Yimmil asked hopefully.

"It's too early for lunch," Sarah said crossly. She was hungry, too. She was hungry, and she had the suspicion that all of her hungers were going to go unsatisfied for a long, long time. Maybe forever.

She lowered her hand and barged through the center door.

* * *

_Fellow-travellers, if you're reading this story and are entertained, please leave me a review._

* * *

**Next… Chapter 16: "Ferry and Freight"**


	16. Ferry and Freight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Soundtrack for Chapter 16:
> 
> "Drowned"—Tim Minchin  
> "Karma Slave"-Splashdown

**Ferry and** **Freight**

* * *

"Whoa, Nellie!" Sarah yelped, almost overbalancing and going straight into the drink.

The narrow gate of the middle passage had opened on a jutting lip of rock that spread out five feet, no more, into the water. A river curved around the base of the mountain, and she could see the far bank held a series of interlocked causeways over a vast mudflat and the held-back waters of the river. There was only the one door, leading back the way she had come. But none of that helped her here, precisely. She looked over the water and couldn't see any means of transportation across.

J _ust once, maybe, just once here things could be easy_ , Sarah groused to herself, looking out at the watery vista spread before her. _Just freakin' once_.

Jareth had been cruel to her at their parting.

"Your _love_ is as strong as death?" he scoffed. "You have no idea what that word means."

"I do so," she said defiantly. His kisses _had_ burned, they had been bitter, where a moment before they'd been so sweet.

He had grabbed her face in his ungloved hand; his talons pricked her in warning. "Little Sarah, still playing dress-up with other peoples' dreams, other peoples' words," he'd mocked her. "Still playing."

"So you tell me what love means," she said, staring at him. "I'm your student. Teach me something new. What did it look like when Robin Zakar loved you?"

"It looked like her son. Perfect loyalty. Perfect unquestioning faith. Perfect obedience," he said, shaking her face, looking at her furiously. She gritted her teeth, disconcerted by how she could feel this angry with him and still find him beautiful: his mouth, warm and plump from her kisses, both his eyes dilated into pools of blackness, his amulet winking from above his heart. "Obedience, submission, and patience. She served me like a god."

"And then she put you away and left you to rot on the pedestal she stood you on," Sarah countered. "You numb bunny. That's not love. That's worship."

"They're the same thing," he sneered, letting her face go. "Would that young Finnvarrah could experience me as well as you do. My wait would have been over years ago. Instead I have you, and you only listen so you can offer back-chat. All the troublesome burdens of feeling you lay on me, and you have the sheer nerve to call it love. Defiance, wilfullness, cheek, and a vow that I can already tell I'll have to force you to keep in the end."

"Fear me, love me, let me rule you," Sarah mocked, but her eyes were hot with exhausted tears. She held up her left wrist like a badge. "Is it that tired line again? Is that what these are about? Not attention. Worship. Well, you're not a god to me, Jareth."

"Call me 'Your Majesty,'" he said coldly. He pushed himself away from her and stood up, wrapping his ivory-sparkled cloak around him. "And _obey_ me."

"Don't be stupid," Sarah said. "I am obeying you. I've done everything you've asked me to do. You set tasks; I've done them. You asked me to unbind you from the salt ring. I did. You asked me to learn some magic; I'm learning. And I tell you I love you, and don't ask you love me back, and you're _hurting_ me."

"You're hurting yourself. Nothing you're doing is done from obedience, Sarah. It's merely convenient to your own desires. How can I love you if you won't suborn your will to mine? You're a danger to me otherwise. You still are. A little trembling submission would be advisable on your part. Or must I teach you that, too?"

"You're right," Sarah said, tears running down her cheeks. He looked at her in surprise. She looked back at him, though his image wavered. "You're right. You're not capable of love." She looked back at her favour, ran her nails under the fine strands and ribbons and picked at it. "I'd take this off if I could. But I made a promise. I think I'll let you do it. When I find you and free you, when this is over. I think I'll make you eat it, Your Majesty." _  
_  
When she looked back up at him, he was gone. _  
_  
 _I don't even care!_ Sarah thought defiantly, staring out at the river, but she did. It was time to acknowledge some hard truths. She cared a lot. The Labyrinth, among other things, was a place that let her be her best self, where it was possible for her to imagine herself being completely selfless and self-sacrificing and good. But it was also the place for Truth-with-a-capital-T, and the truth was, she wasn't a good person. At best she was okay and not doing active harm when it could be helped. At worst she was Queen Bitch, ready to cut her way through life and have her way no matter what the cost.

And the person she'd set her heart on was damaged goods. Jareth seemed like a headcase to her—and she could acknowledge he had some cause—but she also knew it took one to know one. She was the same, almost. It wasn't that she'd been unhappy since her mother had died. It was that her feelings had been murdered and the earth above them salted. The best she could do was what she was doing.

She'd find him, and she'd help him. And she _would_ make him eat her favour. She'd make him choke on it. Then maybe she'd slap him. Then maybe kiss him. It would depend on how tired she was when she finally met him by daylight. She wasn't about to change her nature just to make him more comfortable. He would just have to deal with it, and her, and her baggage, just like she was attempting—not completely without success—to deal with his.

"Psst. Lady."

Sarah looked down at her feet. There was a scorpion there, dark as lapis lazuli, with five glowing white creepy orbs for eyes. She wouldn't have expected it to be the speaker, except that it was as big as a Pekinese.

"Hello," Sarah said cautiously. "What can I do for you?"

"Well, strickly speakin', it's what I can do for you. I got an offer for you." His plated tail came up into striking position, with a bead of green poison on the tip. Sarah backed up a step.

"Do go on," Sarah said, trying not to let her distaste show.

"Squish it," Yimmil firmly advised her.

"I'm tryin' to get across this river. I gots a whole fambly waitin' for me on the other side of this river. You know, the whole fambly Arachnidae. Name ring a bell? Arachnidae?"

"From the name Arachnae, the woman who got into a—" _pissing_ –"weaving contest with Athena, and won."

"Yep, she's a one. Also Ariadne? Know her?"

"She gave Theseus a magic ball of string that unwound for him, showing him the way through Daedalus' Labyrinth."

"Righty-o, Lady. Now for the final round, where da big money is. Clotho?"

Sarah thought for a moment. "One of the Fates. The youngest, the weaver of the strands of a man's life."

"Bingo. Anyway, these ladies, they're all fambly to me. All spinners of fates and ways and decisions. And I can't help but notice you're a human-type woman wandering round thisyere Labyrinth lookin' a bit lost and confused. So what I propose is this. You do me a solid and help me get across this river, and I'll do you a solid on the other side and hook you up with the right people to get the job done. Sound nice?"

Sarah skewed her mouth. "Sounds just amazing, Mister…"

"Scorpio. That'll do. Mr. Scorpio. You can swim, right? So just kick off them thick leather shoes—" the blue-black scorpion darted forward to tap a pincer against her clog—"and lemme climb up on your back next to that-there goblin, somewhere near your neck'd be good—you got allergies? And just lemme ride you across like the 2:15 ferry to the other side of the river. Yeah?"

"I don't think so," Sarah said very certainly, unholstering her gun. _Close shot, but he's fast. Maybe just the threat will be enough._  
  
"I ain't gonna sting you!" Mr. Scorpio protested, but only half-heartedly. "I mean, yeah, it's my nature, but if I stung you, I'd drown. That'd be a piece of stupid on my part. My own enlightened self-interest is a big factor here, Lady."

"Nope," Sarah said firmly, flicking off the safety. "I've read this story too. You sting me halfway across and then apologize and explain that it's your nature while we both die."

"What, me? That's dumb. Don't be dumb. Just bend on down and lemme climb on up—" he made another dart at her and she scuffed her shoe at him, forcing him back.

"Nope."

"Just c'mon and let me—"

"Newp."

"I just wanna—"

"Newwwwp. No way. Sorry, Mr. Scorpio, but I'm not about to take that chance. What I am going to do is show you this—" Sarah thrust her favour forward with a flick of her wrist and show of her fist, without ever misaligning the aim of her gun in her right hand, "—and let you know that I've got the prerogative to shoot you dead for messing with me. I am in no mood, Mr. Scorpio. Not today."

"Well, what am I s'posed to do?" the scorpion whined. "I been stuck here forever on this slab of rock. I'm bored as hell and there's nothing to do!"

"You could learn to swim," Sarah said with false sweetness. Yimmil snorted.

"No wait. Tell you what, Lady. I'll tell you somethin' to your advantage if you open that door there."

"Tell me first and I'll decide if it's worth it," Sarah said, cocking her gun. "Be quick."

"You're goin' the wrong way. Ain't no use trying to get to the castle. The King's gone."

"I knew that already," Sarah said grimly. "Seven years gone. And I'm not headed in. I'm headed out. Try again."

"Seven years for normal human people, sure. But for the rest of us? Most of us? Time don't flow that way. It's been seven hundred years if it's been a day."

"That's great to know," Sarah said, "But that's not useful to me either, because I'm a normal human person."

Mr. Scorpio clicked his mandibles thoughtfully. "The Labyrinth holds a monster at its center, a creature that ain't a man or a demon but somethin' a both. Thasswhy it exists. The Labyrinth is a prison for the monster. And there ain't no-one nowhere who'd be so stupid as to think to let the monster escape. Except maybe you, Lady."

Sarah reached out and swung the door open, and gestured with her gun. "Amscray," she said. "I want you on the other side of this door or a bullet in your body or you in the river. Your choice, Mr. Scorpio, but I'm tired of chatting with you. There isn't enough room here for both of us."

Mr. Scorpio raised one pincer in what Sarah was sure was some sort of obscene gesture for arachnids and scuttled through the doorway. He paused and turned, raising his stinger near her foot, apparently deciding on a last-minute attempted murder. She kicked the door closed halfway on him, pinning him, and shot him dead with two perfect bullets.

"You suck, Lady," he wheezed with his last breath, poison oozing out of him.

"I can't help it," she said sadly, sweeping his body into the river with a stroke of her shoe. "It's my nature."

* * *

She squatted on the lip of the quay for some time, trying to figure out what to do. True, she could try to swim the river, but her things would get wet, and there was no telling what sort of dangerous creatures might be lurking in the swift depths. She saw blue shadows moving in the deep, and wondered how sharp their teeth were.

A wet wobbling head broke the surface of the water by her feet and Sarah, startled, fell back on her butt.

"Hello," said the creature, spitting out a deep mouthful of water. It was green head, a beaked head, the head of a giant turtle. The shell floated out, a shell all made of beautiful colors, and tiny silver minnows swam in its wake. "I couldn't help but notice that the scorpion is dead again. Was that your doing?" The turtle's voice was mellflous as the currents, warbling with the experience of great old age.

"I'm afraid so," Sarah said. "Friend of yours?"

"Not a bit of it," the turtle said disdainfully. "Abhorrent creature. He always wants to get across the river, and he always stings the ferryman to death. But of course, death never lasts long. He comes back. Or another aspect of him comes back. Nothing living can ever truly die."

"You're quite philosophical."

"I'm a Buddhist," the turtle said glumly, dipping and flexing its long flippers. "Would you need a ride across the water, then?"

"I really do," Sarah said, feeling hopeful. "Would you be willing?"

"I suppose I might, but only if you leave your nasty gun behind. You might be a scorpion yourself, but at least your sting is detachable."

"I don't want to do that," Sarah said. "What if I need it again?"

"If you think you'll need it that badly, you can always swim."

Sarah looked at her gun, and looked at the far-away bank. _This'll be a test_ , she thought. _If I need the gun badly enough, I'll be able to summon it to my hand once I'm on the other side. This will be easier than the key. I remember you, my weapon, the feeling of you in my hand. Muscle memory._ She laid it carefully on the stone slab. "As you say. Please, take me across."

"Step on my back," the turtle instructed.

She climbed carefully on, holding on to the convex shell with hands and feet. Yimmil stayed on her back and the turtle took them slowly across the river, drifting down with the strangely shifting current, rising and sinking as its huge flippers propelled them through the deep blue water.

"I suppose the scorpion mentioned his family," the turtle remarked.

"Yes," Sarah said. "He did." The water smelled cool and fresh, but she was troubled by the scorpion's words. The monster at the center of the Labyrinth—it was like what Neringia had said about the King. _"Wherever the King sits is the head of the table, and wherever the King is, is the center of the Labyrinth."_ Was this place also a prison? Was Jareth dangerous? The Minotaur had been fond of eating human beings. And she'd learned that the fae also had similar appetites, though perhaps not as bloody in the eating.

_Is the Labyrinth itself his prison? And what harm is he capable of doing if he were set free?_

_I'll have to make a choice_ , she realized. _He knows my conditions_. _If he's evil, if he's like one of the nastier creatures in the Observatory, if he really is a monster, I don't have to set him free. And I won't. I don't have to help him._

She tried to remember how angry he'd made her last night, to weigh the anger against her promises and ensure that a grudge from a petty fight wouldn't outweigh doing the right thing when the time came to free him. With a breath of relief, she felt how it didn't.

"Stupid scorpion," she muttered.

"The scorpion is full of poison, you know," the turtle replied.

"Oh?" Sarah asked.

"Oh yes. He enjoys injecting it with his barbed stinger or his words. I wouldn't dwell too much on anything he says. Maybe next time around he'll be a bit less venomous."

"Next time?"

"I told you, I'm a Buddhist. Mostly. Rudyard Kipling had it right. 'They will come back – come back again, as long as the red Earth rolls. He never wasted a leaf or a tree. Do you think He would squander souls?' Of course, strictly speaking, a soul isn't so much one piece as it is a collection of other pieces. Provided one has a soul."

"Do you think the King of the Labyrinth has a soul?"

"Not that it matters, but yes. Although he's at a disadvantage, having few relationships with others that do, and having no other life to recall but his own. It's a hard thing, to be a monarch."

The air was soft on her face, and the river was a dream of green life. Other denizens passed them in various volumes as they crossed—the curious faces of two seals, a raft of playful chattering otters. Once, in the far distance, Sarah swore to herself that she saw the head of Nessie dipping out of the water in a great muscular bow, then sinking again.

"Can I ask your name?"

"My name is my occupation. So you can call me the Ferryman, or Charon, or St. Christopher, or Utnapishtim, or Chukwa, Kurmaraja or Ark. Or Kappa or Kelpie, Nakka or Ao. Whichever you prefer. Any of those titles will do, but are not, strictly speaking, the whole story. The whole story is never whole, in any event."

"Does the King of the Labyrinth have any other names?"

"Judge. Archmagus. Youngest of the Gentry. Brother of the Mysteries. Uncrowned King. Goblin King. Host of the Revels. Judex of the Cusp. The Engineer. Jare'th. And, most recently, Jareth. But those are only a few. He might be a world of names."

The turtle paused and backpaddled against the edge of one of the brick causeways jutting out into the water. It looked just wide enough to walk over comfortably.

"Thank you," Sarah said as she disembarked. "Sincerely, Ark. You were very helpful."

"It was my privilege, Your Majesty," the turtle said. "Oh?" he bubbled, mouth half-out of the water, laughing at her surprise. "You think you don't have many other names? You think I haven't ferried you before and wouldn't know you by your weight? Though your burdens are lighter now. Perhaps next time I carry you, I won't know you. If you're strong enough, you might escape making the same mistakes again. Or show the King how to avoid his mistakes. You might both escape the wheel together. You both weigh about the same now, coming and going. You wax and wane together, always in balance. Bring him back to us, Your Majesty."

She stood on the thick strip of brickwork, inches above the flowing currents, the nape of her neck prickling with the sort of immanent wonder she'd felt the first time that Jareth had kissed her wrist, given her his favour, and said her name.

_It's going to be all right_ , she decided.

She watched the turtle sink from sight.

"Weirdo," Yimmil declared.

* * *

_I borrowed a character from "The Scorpion and the Frog" from Aesop's Fables, and the line "Not that it matters, but yes" from_ _ The Neverending Story _ _. And the poetry the turtle recites is from Rudyard Kipling's "The Sack of the Gods," which you outta read. It's a trip. Jareth's alternative title of office, "The Engineer," is taken from Clive Barker's The Hellbound Heart, the Hellraiser novelette. Because the idea tickles me._

_Any other reference I unknowingly made belongs to the original authors, natch._

* * *

_**Next… Chapter 17: "Three Burnt Leaves"** _


	17. Three Burnt Leaves

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Soundtrack for Chapter 17:
> 
> "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger"—Daft Punk  
> "Epic"—Faith No More

**Three Burnt Leaves**

* * *

 

Sarah walked carefully over the causeways and hopped over the sluices, her feet inch-deep in the stream that flowed there. She paused a moment when she heard splashing water and, taking one step further, saw that her narrow track spilled over deep walls of slate-blue stones into narrow cisterns. Below was a topiary maze made of white privet. She sighed, preparing to backtrack again. What she needed was a way down; she could see where she needed to go, but not how to get there.

It was encouraging, but only slightly, to see that she was almost at the initial perimeter of the topiary maze. If patterns remained congruent, she was more than halfway there. As Sarah retraced her steps trying to find a new avenue, she set the frustrated part of herself to counting backward from what she remembered of her first journey and tallied the places against where she'd already been. The Center. The Castle at the Center. The Goblin City, also the Goblin Market. The Junkyard. The Crystal Ballroom. The Parkland. All pretty much identical, despite some varying details and dangers.

After that, the pattern was no longer identical, but at least it was analogous. The territories she'd explored were new, but they were variations on similar themes. The Bog of Unfiltered Speech correlated to the Bog of Eternal Stench. The strange wilderness where she'd almost been dismembered by those aggravating and idiotic body-swapping creatures had been replaced by a climb into the Observatory under the mountain. And now, below her, was a white and russet topiary maze. If the pattern held true, she only had two, or perhaps three more zones to get through after this: some sort of passage beneath the earth, the stone maze, and the desolate outer perimeter of brickwork. It was only a matter of getting to where she was going, and she felt very certain that wherever Jareth was, it was somewhere on the periphery, the margins, the very outmost border of his kingdom.

Sarah knew from extensive experience that the only situation in which a puzzle didn't get incredibly flaky around the edges was when it was a jigsaw puzzle. In life, and in stories, and even in games of strategy, the strongest and surest place was the center. The outer edges tended to crack and fray. But sometimes that was best—flaws, imprecisions, and vagaries could be fuel for interesting solutions that made the whole piece more resonant and fulfilling. However, she was less concerned with the artistic integrity of her experience than she was with finding her way through and surviving it intact.

Sometime in the early afternoon, Sarah found a series of narrow steps and followed their counterclockwise spiral down into the rustling walls of the topiary maze. As she entered this strange region, she could see quite clearly that the leaves of the privet were cream-colored, not pure white, and also that they weren't precisely leaves at all. They were paper, and this whole zone was an intricately staggered series of walls of stripped books and stacked loose-leaf paper, some with writing and some without. Although she couldn't smell evidence of fire, some of the edges of the books and papers bore definite signs of having been burned or scorched. Others were stained with mold and rot.

_And no monsters_ , she thought with satisfaction. _At least for right now_. "Hop down, Yimmil," Sarah said, bending low. She unslung her bag and took her jacket off.

"What we doing, Yes-Ma'am-Lady?" Yimmil asked.

"I'm practicing," Sarah said.

She closed her eyes and remembered Jareth's instructions. _"The first magic is to name a thing, but before you can name a thing, you must see a thing. Hold it tight in your mind."_ She saw her gun, lying abandoned on the stone jetty, and named it her weapon, felt its weight in her hand. _I want you,_ she thought. _Come to me. Where else would you like to be, my gun, but in my hand? My skill and my threat. Come to me._ She opened her eyes.

A perfect crystal formed in her raised fingertips. The position of her fingers wasn't quite exact, and the crystal threatened to tip and shatter. _No_ , Sarah thought, adjusting her fingers and thumb. _Be mine_.

The crystal solidified, took on some weight.

_Come to me_ , she thought, rolling the crystal back and forth over her hand. Jareth had said " _Magic has inertia. It wants to move. Help it move."_ But she had neither Jareth's experience nor his skill; she couldn't juggle the crystal with his effortless and fluid movements. She could, however, coax the crystal to move back and forth from the front of her hand to the palm, letting it roll over the arch of knuckles and tendons. When she felt she'd done her duty to play with the crystal, she grabbed the orb with the strength of her whole arm, and felt the memory of target practice in her body.

The gun appeared in her hand.

_Good_ , she thought, with some relief. She checked the safety and holstered it. _I'm glad you're here_.

"Yes-Ma'am-Lady get it?" Yimmil asked.

"I'm pretty sure I did," Sarah said, smiling. "Lunch now?"

"Yes please," Yimmil said.

* * *

_I'm going to call you the Libraryinth_ , Sarah thought, as she traversed the wide corridors of books and papers. As she went further in, the books lower in the architectural stacks developed covers, and she read some of the spines when they (rarely) had English titles. Even further in, she could see that some of the interbricked stacks of books were interwoven with clay tablets, lead plaques, photograph frames, objects d'art, dolls, statuettes, curios and other strange things. _The sum of all bookshelves_ , Sarah thought, thinking of personal libraries she'd seen. They were never just books, they were all the little bits that got displayed and mixed-up with the books, until the memory of one shelf was inexplicably twined with the assortment of oddities and relevant items that came with it. But here there were no shelves, just their contents, and she felt she was missing some key point…

There was no librarian on duty, or at least not one that she could see, but the whole precinct was as silent as a cloister. So while she was surprised when she first heard the sounds of quiet conversation nearby, she also recognized two of the voices and, turning a corner, caught sight of a familiar face.

It was the old wandering hermit with his verbose hat. Both old man and hat cast Sarah an evaluating, dismissive look as the old man finished his conversation with a seven-foot-tall bird-headed man. _Thoth_ , Sarah realized, and felt a frisson of awe. Thoth, in his pleated kilt, was kneeling at the Old Man's feet, writing small and perfect characters at a small inclined desk. His serpent-neck arched and curled, his beak chirped a discreet inquiry, and he tossed a handful of sand over his paper. Then he took up the paper in one hand, folded his desk under his other arm, and darted away. The feather-quill he'd been writing with revolved slowly in empty air until the Old Man grabbed it with one arthritic hand and tucked it deep into the many paper, leather, and feather-folds of his robes. He beckoned Sarah forward, eying her favour with impatient suspicion.

"So, a young queen," he rumbled.

"Not a bit of it yet," squawked the Hat.

He cast an irritated glance upward before giving Sarah a profound look. "And what can I do for you?" asked the Old Man.

"I apologize if I disturbed you," Sarah said. "But I'm trying to find the King of the Labyrinth. Can you help me?" _You weren't much help before,_ she couldn't help but think _. But maybe now things will be different_.

"The way forward," the Old Man said sternly, "Is sometimes the way back."

"Yes," Sarah said, trying not to be impatient. "That's what you said the last time we met."

"We've met before?" asked the Old Man.

"Impertinent," the Hat offered. "Send 'eem to the gallows, baby Queen!"

"Yes, we've met before!" Sarah said angrily, ignoring the Hat. "I was much younger, and it was in the green topiary maze, the plaza with the sundial. I was with Hoggle, and I asked you for advice getting to the Castle. And I gave you a ring my mom gave me and put it in your beggar's-box."

"Hmm. Yes." The Old Man stroked his moustaches and gave her a keen look. "And now you want to find the King of the Labyrinth?"

"Yes," Sarah almost shouted in gratitude.

"Even if it means you won't be Queen?"

"I don't care about any of that," Sarah said. "Are you going to help me, or not?"

"Let me lean on your arm," the Old Man said imperiously. "There may still be time."

"Time for what?" Sarah asked, but doing as he asked. He was tall and massive, but frail, and she felt a bit burdened when his weight leaned on her.

"Time to grab de fat from de fire," the Hat chirruped.

The Old Man gave his Hat another daunting look, and it quieted. Above the high walls of the books, a column of smoke had appeared. "What's going on?" Sarah asked, trying not to tug the Old Man along faster than he could comfortably go. "Where are we going?"

They turned a corner and Sarah saw the column of smoke was coming from a burning pile of books. The smoke had a thin cinnamon scent, as if what was being consumed was very slight.

"What is this?"

"No room, no room, move down!" The Hat squawked.

"I don't understand," Sarah said, aggrieved and angry at the blasphemous sight of books being burned. A few long-legged birds with sharp prehistoric beaks tended the fire. When something seemed in danger of escaping the pyre, they grasped it in their talons and thrust it back to the heart of the blaze. "Why are you burning these things?"

"The blessings of forgetfulness, Your Majesty," the Old Man said quietly. "Every story is a wall. Some stories should be elaborated upon. Others must be burned."

Sarah dropped his arm and ran to the pyre. It was a small conflagration kindled in the deep arms of one of the walls, cluttered with books and odd tchotchkes, a tapestry that disintegrated before she could comprehend the pattern, a red terrycloth robe, and several light pages. The fire-birds hissed and slashed at her, but she fended them off with Yimmil's help. She grabbed up the first unburnt book she could find, and saw it was a slim small volume, a composition book with a red marbled cover. She tossed it over her shoulder to safety and kicked out a few scorched and burned wooden dolls.

"I want you to stop," Sarah said. "No more fires here. Not until I say otherwise."

"As you wish, Your Majesty," The Old Man said. The Hat rolled his eyes in disdain. "But you had asked the way to the King of the Labyrinth. How can you find him unless this wall is burned down?"

"I don't know," Sarah said. She hissed back at one of the birds and stomped on the coals with limited success. It was hopeless. In a few minutes more, the balance of items she'd failed to rescue had been reduced to glowing embers. In the minutes after that, the embers went to ash. In the next moment, the gentle breeze took the ash up in the air and it floated away as a miasma of glitter and wind. The fire-birds spread their fleshy wings and fluttered ungracefully up to the tops of the stacks and stalked away in several directions.

"Dat stuff ain't going to help much," the Hat laughed at her, as Sarah knelt down and looked at the detritus she'd saved from the pyre. "What you want that crap for anyway?"

"That's for me to decide," Sarah said, picking up one of the burned dolls. The paint was smoldering a bit, but it was otherwise unburnt. Like Thoth, it wore a chiton but no pectoral. It was surprisingly heavy in her hands.

The doll spoke to her, directly into her mind.

_…and when we carve the wood, Your Majesty, we must gauge the sharpness of our tools against the hardness of the material. Whenever possible, slide the blade with the grain._

Startled, Sarah put the doll down. For a moment, she felt the knowledge of the carver's skill in her hands, could smell woodshavings and sap, feel the susurration of the pumice-stone as she rubbed her work smooth. She shook her head, and picked up the doll again.

_…to retain its tensile strength, it's best to soak the wood in water, or to polish it with oil. The wood remembers its life with water, Your Majesty. Preserve the water and you preserve the life of your work._

"They're ushabti," Sarah said with wonder, putting the doll back down again.

"What's ushabti?" Yimmil asked. Sarah grabbed Finnvah's scarf and used it to turn the doll over. As she suspected, the doll didn't talk to her unless she touched it with her bare hands. It stood on a narrow wooden base, and carved there were a series of hieroglyphics, and the pentuch that denoted a personal name— _The name of the maker, or the name of the doll_?—but the wadjet, the broken eye, and the writing confirmed her guess. "Ushabti are dolls that Egyptian nobles put in their tombs. There were ushabti for everything—woodworkers, weavers, musicians, mathematicians, hunters, fighters, advisors, farmers."

"Just dolls, Yes-Ma'am-Lady," Yimmil said derisively, nudging the second piece of salvage, an acrobat standing on his hands. Yimmil offered it to her in confusion. "Whyfor they take dolls to their tombs?"

"Well," said Sarah, inspecting the acrobatic figure one moment before picking it up, "The Egyptians believed the dolls would serve them in the afterlife. A noble didn't want to grow his own grain or hunt his own hippo. The dolls did all of that for them. But these dolls… I don't exactly know why they're here."

_…and you may handle weapons, Your Majesty, as befits your state, but far better it is to become a weapon. Your bones are hollow but strong, and your hands can be sharp as knives. Here are some attacks you might use on an enemy._

Sarah put the acrobat figure down, and saw how his arched hands each concealed a tiny perfect brass dagger. She clenched and unclenched her own hands, feeling the memory of another person's strength and skill in them, the confidence to kill and maim, or to refrain from doing harm.

"Lost things come here, Yimmil," Sarah said. She looked at the third doll in the collection. It had a shaven head, painted blue. "I think… maybe they're the King's teachers. Or his tutors. Or his library."

"The King plays with dolls?" Yimmil sounded outraged.

"I used to play with dolls," Sarah informed him in superior tones.

"It would be wise," the Old Man said, harrumphing, "to consign all these things to the fires they belong to."

Sarah shot him a look and deliberately picked up the third doll.

_…Yours is a heart of carnelian, crimson as murder on a holy day. Yours is a heart of a comet, the gnarled roots of a dogwood and the bursting of flowers. You are the broken wax seal on your lover's letters. You are the phoenix, the fiery sun, consuming and resuming yourself. You pace the halls of the underworld. You knock on the doors of death. The souls of the gods are with you. They hum like flies in your ears._  
  
"Quite often, Your Majesty, it seems as though we're getting somewhere, when in fact—"

"We're not!" interrupted the Hat.

"We're not, no."

"Just let me look," Sarah said. She opened up the composition book. Many of the pages had been ripped out. There were just three leaves here, three short pages, each with a cruel story written in stark black ink on the blue-lined pages, the paper torn in places, as if written by a talon dipped in bile.

**FEAR**   
**Once upon a time he stole her and kept her. He forced**   
**her body to yield to his. She tried to run away. He cut off**   
**her feet.**   
**"Now you will not run," he said.**   
**She tried to crawl away, and he cut off her hands.**   
**"Now you won't try a third time."**   
**But she tried a third time to escape, and he cut out his heart,**   
**and forced her to eat it.**

**Their relationship prospered thereafter.**

**LOVE**   
**Once upon a time he wooed and wed her.**   
**She entertained him greatly.**   
**Eventually she ceased to entertain and began, perforce,**   
**to bore him.**   
**She wanted only what he wanted of her. And then one**   
**day she was only a painted doll.**   
**And another day she was altogether gone.**   
**"Where is your lady wife?" the goblins asked.**

**"I forget," he said. "And I am glad to forget,**   
**because I remember her more fondly as she was before.**   
**"I forget," he said, "because I must live forever, and**   
**she cannot."**

**RULE**   
**Once upon a time she served and saved him.**   
**"Do as I say," he said, and she did. He would suffer**   
**no divisions in her attention.**   
**"Abandon your life for me," he commanded, and she did.**   
**"Kill for me. Kill my enemies," and she did.**   
**"Kill the ones you love, so that I have all your love, only I,"**   
**and she did.**   
**"Now die for me," he said, and she did.**   
**In her absence, she had his perfect attention.**

**"Now you are truly Queen of the Labyrinth," he said.**

"You were right," Sarah said, the hair on her scalp standing up with horror. She handed the book to the Old Man. "Some things should be burned." She wiped her hands on her jeans, as if she'd handled something filthy. _Lies_. _All of it, lies_. She kicked the dolls, although they'd offered nothing offensive. _Nasty, hurtful stuff._

_Lies_ , she thought. _Nasty lies_. But the stories on each of the three leaves had spoken to her with Jareth's voice, and she knew the stories had been written about her.

_And now I know what he's afraid of_ , she thought.

* * *

**Next… Chapter 18: "What Is Essential Is Invisible to the Eye"**

* * *

_Please, leave a contribution in the leetle box. Reviews make me so exquisitely happy, especially when they're speculative.  
_

_Thanks as per usual to my beta, Nyllewell, who keeps a weather eye on the bridges I might otherwise foolishly burn._

_If you haven't already, trip your heels directly over to_ _**FrancesOsgood's** _ _page on FF.net and read her short Labyrinth novella "A Wish Unspoken."_ _**Then leave her a review** _ _. It's one of the most amazing pieces of fiction I've ever had the privilege to read, and it deserves more attention than it's getting._

_The words spoken by the magician-priest ushabti are taken from the Egyptian Book of the Dead, translated by Normandi Ellis._


	18. The Essential Is Invisible to the Eye

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Soundtrack for Chapter 18
> 
> "I Gave You All"—Mumford and Sons  
> "My Last Two Weeks"—Peter Murphy  
> "Wild is the Wind"—David Bowie
> 
> Author's Note: the very end of this chapter contains sexual situations. Reader discretion is advised.  
> A/N: Salacious perverts, please don't read the end of the chapter first. Context is all.

**What Is Essential Is Invisible to the Eye  
**

* * *

 

She sat at ease in the hammock, only one toe dipped out, to press against the ground to rock herself back and forth, her other foot tucked in against her thigh. Yimmil was curled in against her side, which felt nice. She stroked his fur quietly. She was tired, but not sleepy. The night was full of noises, sounds and sweet airs which gave delight and hurt not. Bugs droned and frogs chirped in the far-off cisterns and aqueducts, and while there were no stars, there was at least the curious interplay of light and shadow over the darkened sky. The Libraryinth had been vast and strange, but she had the feeling it might come to an end soon, which would be a relief. Every burn-pile, every smouldering doorway, felt like a defeat. She hadn't had the courage to read or rescue any other texts, and had left the gods and monsters of the precinct to their cinnamon funeral pyres of thought and story.

The night was two-thirds over, and she hadn't slept, choosing instead to keep working her way through the secretive darkness of the occult library. She had practiced magic today, and practiced it well, practically speaking. In the night, it was easier to weave the threads of magic that she could now almost feel, tickling around her like a net. She'd brought forth a fast-food feast for herself and her little goblin companion, and later a green-shaded lantern to light her way in the darkness, and finally, feeling confident, a hammock when she saw two upthrust obelisks standing at a juncture in the stacks of books and papers. And now she rocked herself, enjoying the evening breeze, watching the steady low light of the lantern, feeling comfortable and uncertain and strange. Sarah closed her eyes, just for a moment, wanting the dark, wanting Jareth, and tired of holding off on the inevitable.

When she opened her eyes again, she knew she was dreaming. She could smell Jareth nearby, that scent of summer-wet pavements evaporating in the sun, the dark note of amber, the spice of nicotine and masculine flesh.

"Come out, come out, wherever you are, Your Majesty," she called softly. "I know you're here."

He stepped forward carefully, in simple pale clothing that made a ghost of him in the dark. His shirt and loose trousers were simple cambric, torn and mended in places with embroidered darns in the shapes of feathers and spirals and chevrons, white on white. Even in the dark she could see the color of his skin through the fine linen, and see deep scratches against his breast and neck, the red embroidery he must have stitched on his own flesh, although his hands were decorously gloved now, in black. She saw his amulet, too, over his heart, its shape echoed in a brass pin that held his long hair against the nape of his neck. Without his habitual cloak and collar, she could see how his shoulders and chest were narrow. Slender. Slender as blanched flower. And as vulnerable.

Normally Jareth always seemed to enjoy the first moments of a dream, when she gave herself license to admire him, enjoying her admiration, but tonight he seemed introspective, troubled. _And with reason_ , Sarah thought. _I'm late_. She watched him.

"I didn't think you were coming," he said quietly. "I eventually supposed you didn't want to talk to me." He came forward and sat, cross-legged, by her knee, and looked up at her. "Were you… punishing me for what happened the other night?"

"What? No." She had to smile a little at that. "Maybe a little." Sarah knit her fingers under her chin. "I needed a break. I didn't want to listen to you apologize. Or fail to apologize. I didn't want to listen to you. But here you are again. Are you going to be mean to me now?" She rocked herself lazily, patted Yimmil like she would with a nice cat. She could only manage to smile with half of herself. The other half was unhappy.

"I waited," he said, clenching and unclenching his gloved hands. "I didn't… I didn't understand how much I looked forward to seeing you until I couldn't. I waited. It felt like a very long time."

"Well, Your Majesty, you made your bed tonight. It's not my fault you don't like lying in it." Her words were stern but she kept her tone gentle.

"Please," he said. "Please call me Jareth."

"Oh, so we're back to personal names again?" Sarah said lightly. "Do you want me to obey your first order, or your second? Inquiring minds want to know." She saw his mouth compress in frustration, detected just a flicker of guilt in his eyes, and decided to take pity on him. "As Your Majesty commands. I'll call you by your name again. If."

"If what?" His face slanted suspiciously.

"If you never act like that again. Kicking me when I'm down. Hurting me when I'm vulnerable. You do that, and I'll never speak one word to you again. Oh, I'll keep my promise to set you free." She waved her hand negligently as his expression became obstinate. "I don't have to talk to you to get the job done. But don't you dare whip me with the raw ends of your temper. Not again. Not if you want to enjoy my company." She pointed one cruel finger at his breast. "Is it a bargain, Your Majesty?"

He stared at her hungrily, as if trying to make up his mind. "That's quite the 'if,' Sarah. What if I enjoyed your company more when you're silent?"

She spread her hands out and shrugged. "It's your choice, Your Majesty. The clock is ticking and I'm not feeling particularly generous. Do we have an agreement? Can we try to be friends?"

"Friends," he said disdainfully.

"Yes or no, Your Majesty. Your time is almost up."

He closed his eyes and sighed in exasperation. He opened his eyes again. "Yes. Friends."

"All right then. Jareth." This time her smile was genuine, a grin full of knowledge and relief.

"What?" he said, crossing his arms over his chest petulantly.

"You like me," Sarah said, the grin threatening to split her head in half. It was true. He must like her quite a lot, considering he'd agreed to her terms. No slave, she. No servant. A friend. Maybe. _Has he ever had a friend?_ "You like me," she said, sighing with satisfaction.

"I've said as much." His mouth lifted into a moue of self-satisfied arrogance.

"You like me," Sarah cooed playfully. "You want to ki-iiss me."

"I'd like to do much more than that," he said sternly, and then mashed his glove to his mouth, as if to force the words back unspoken.

Sarah laughed. It felt like golden bubbles in her chest. "What's stopping you, then?" Sarah asked.

"Elementary caution in the face of an untamed animal," he said, tossing his head and giving her a subtle smile. "I'm afraid one of us might bite." He climbed into the hammock next to her, light as a feather. Sarah rocked them, all three, together.

"This is fine work," Jareth said, lightly changing the topic. "Yours?"

"Mine," Sarah said with satisfaction. "More enjoyable than sleeping on hard ground."

"You learn quickly," he said. "That's most pleasing."

"Oh, I've learned quite a lot today, Jareth."

"Care to share?"

"No," Sarah said. "It must be those fae desires you warned me about. I'm having strange cravings. Tonight I crave… obscurity." She looked up at the sky and reached out for his hand. In a moment, he took it.

"Friends," he said again, making it a question. "Friends are familiar with one another? I was given to believe that familiarity breeds contempt."

"I think familiarity breeds comfort." Like love, friendship was something she understood more by definition than experience. "Friendship is gentler than love, more comfortable than responsibility I think… maybe friends are the people who let you be who you are. They make you feel more like yourself. Faults and all."

"Are you suggesting I have faults? That I am less than perfect?" His tone suggested he was teasing her, but there was a note of reproach in his voice as well, as if he truly believed she thought him perfect.

"I used to think you were. The perfect antagonist. Perfect beauty. But I see you better now. And I like you better, because I can see you're not perfect."

"You're wounding my vanity. Care to list my imperfections?"

"No. I'm not your judge."

"Aren't you."

"No. I wish I had the right words. I wish I could explain. Friends give each other things."

"Like peaches. Like pretty dresses, and parties, and crowns and kingdoms?"

"No. The most important things are … intangible. Invisible. Wait." Sarah had an idea. She raised her fingers, and a perfect crystal immediately formed there.

"Like lessons in magic?"

"Oh, I suppose, but that's not what I had in mind." She rolled the orb over her hand and passed it over to him. He was deft, and the hammock moved only very slightly as he juggled the crystal in economic, expert motions. In the lamplight, his eyes unequal eyes gleamed with pleasure.

"Like that," Sarah said. "If I could give you your magic back, I would. I can see that you miss it."

"What is it?" he asked, rolling the crystal back to her hands.

"You know, human beings aren't like the fae," Sarah said, clutching the orb down past her thigh, letting the gift inside it materialize just out of his line of sight. "We don't always have the right words. So when someone does, we put them down in writing. For other people. We share. And there's no division in the sharing. The words only get stronger and better, the more they're shared."

"What are you doing? What have you got?" Jareth leaned across, trying to spy out what she had.

"I've brought you a present," Sarah said quietly. "It's a book," she said, showing him. "Nothing more. But if you turn it this way, and look into it, it'll show you my right words."

"A book," he said disdainfully.

"With pictures," Sarah said, temptingly. "But the words are more important, I think." She handed the flat square book to him and he flipped through it the way a child would, staring at the illustrations, skipping over the words, muttering something about the improbability of an elephant fitting down a boa constrictor's throat.

"Which words are important?" Jareth asked, studying the text. "How can lies be important?"

"There are some truths that tell a lie, and some lies that tell the truth," Sarah said. "I know you know what I mean when I say that." He was reluctant to meet her gaze, but he did, and gave a condescending nod. "This book is called The Little Prince. It's about a beautiful little man who lives on a beautiful little star, and he falls to Earth to learn things he didn't know before. But he's lost, and misses his home, and his rose." Sarah smiled slightly. "He reminds me of you, Jareth."

He handed the book back to her. "Read it to me," he commanded, turning and leaning his head on her thigh.

Sarah smiled. "Not all of it," she said. "But I'll read the chapter I was thinking of tonight." She turned the pages until she came to the chapter about the Fox.

**"Who are you?" asked the little prince, and added, "You are very pretty to look at."**

**"I am a fox," the Fox said.**

**"Come and play with me," proposed the Little Prince. "I am so unhappy."**

**"I cannot play with you," the Fox said. "I am not tamed."**

**"Ah! Please excuse me," said the Little Prince.**

"Little _Fae_ ," Jareth demanded, listening closely.

 **"Ah! Please excuse me," said the Little** **_Fae_ ** **.**

**But, after some thought, he added:**

**"What does that mean-'tame'?"**

**"You do not live here," said the Fox. "What is it that you are looking for?"**

**"I am looking for men," said the Little Fae. "What does that mean-'tame'?"**

**"It is an act too often neglected," said the Fox.**

"Said the Woman!" Jareth suggested, with a certainty too strong to deny.

" **It is an act too often neglected, said the** ** _Woman_** **,"** Sarah substituted. Very, very gently, she put her hand on his head, smoothing his hair down against his temple. **"It means to establish ties."**

" **'To establish ties'?"**

 **"Just that," said the F—the Woman. "To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy—"**  
  
"Fae!" Jareth insisted.

" **Nothing more than a little** ** _fae_** **who is just like a hundred thousand other fae. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you, I am nothing more than a fo-woman like a hundred thousand other women. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world. Please-tame me!" the Woman said.**

**"I want to, very much," the Little Fae replied. "But I have not much time, and a great many things to understand."**

**"One only understands the things that one tames," said the Woman. "Humans have no more time to understand anything. They buy things all ready made at the shops. But there is no shop anywhere where one can buy friendship, and so humans have no friends any more. If you want a friend, tame me."**

**"What must I do, to tame you?" asked the Little Fae.**

**"You must be very patient," replied the Woman. "First you will sit down at a little distance from me-like that-in the grass. I shall look at you out of the corner of my eye, and you will say nothing. Words are the source of misunderstandings."**

Jareth hummed with pleasurable agreement. Her touch on his hair became very, very careful.

**So the Little Fae tamed the Woman. And when the hour of his departure drew near-**

**"Ah," said the Woman, "I shall cry."**

**"It is your own fault," said the Little Fae. "I never wished you any sort of harm; but you wanted me to tame you."**

**"Yes, that is so," said the Woman.**

**"But now you are going to cry!" said the Little Fae.**

**"Yes, that is so," said the Woman.**

**"Then it has done you no good at all!"**

**"It has done me good," said the Woman, "because… because of the Labyrinth."**

Sarah's voice was low as she delivered the Fox's secret.

**"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye. Men have forgotten this truth," said the Woman. "But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed."**

Sarah let the book fall to her knee.

"Is _that_ what I've done to you?" asked Jareth, looking up at her, bewildered. "Tamed you?"

"Do you think I mind?" she asked quietly, stroking a refugee lock of hair behind his ear. They were very, very slightly pointed ears, delightful to touch. "Haven't I told you how to do it? And haven't I tamed you, as well? Isn't that what we've done to each other?"

"What is essential is invisible to the eye," he murmured, looking intrigued. "Yes. That feels like truth. Thank you for that gift, Sarah." He arched up on his arms and rubbed his head against her breast, and then rose higher to kiss her, folding the book between them, the paper becoming pander and chaperone in one.

"Careful," Sarah murmured. "We'll wake Yimmil."

"That blasted goblin," Jareth said, sneering at the sleeping Yimmil on Sarah's far side. "Come, walk with me. There are things I want to say to you, and as you say, it would be bad form to wake the goblin. No, leave the book with him," he said, as she closed it in her hand. Sarah left it behind on the hammock and took Jareth's arm.

They had walked only a very short way before she asked, "What did you want to say to me?"

"This," he said, kissing her left eye. "And this," kissing her right. "And also… also this." He laid the tenderest kiss of them all upon her lips. He held her hands in his.

"Would that I could use my magic," he said, "I'd rain jewels down on you in a storm."

"That much jewelry would be too much of a burden to wear," Sarah said. "And anyway, I don't want jewels."

"If I could use my magic," he said, "I'd bend the world's eye to your whim, and you could wear it as a ring on your smallest finger."

"I don't want the world's attention," Sarah said. "There's only one person whose attention I want… and he isn't in the world, and I think he's already looking at me now, anyway."

"Then let me think," Jareth said. "Let me think what I can give you, and what you would deign to accept. I have so little to offer." His last comment was delivered thoughtfully. "Ah. Now I know." He pressed his hands against her jacket, through the sleeves on her shoulders, warming her through his gloves. "I only have myself. Is that a gift you'd like?"

"Only if you want to give it," Sarah said, but she trembled, and not with cold.

"Close your eyes for me," he instructed. "And I will."

Like a game of blind-man's bluff, he undressed her in the darkness behind her eyelids, and held her close to his own warm nakedness in that dark. Naked, and near to her as near could be, but for his gloves and the unyielding metal of his amulet. She could feel the tactile deadness of those gloves; he wanted to protect her from his talons. He stroked her back with long caresses of his hands, and then, with a curve of his wrists, stroked her with the smooth skin of his inner arm, with the flesh just above the cuffs of those gloves.

Her muscles knotted and unknotted. She tried not to moan, but the sound escaped her lips, a thin high note that she tried to catch back. His touch disappeared again, and then his hands were back on her, hard and strong, almost hurting, laying her trembling body down on her back onto the receiving weight of a thousand featherbeds. She blinked; her hair half in her eyes, not meaning to look, but unable to help herself. They were in some sort of muffled darkness, some sweet and tender nest that he'd made or conjured from her dreams.

"Please," he said, as she reached out to the dim pale shadow of his body. "Don't look. Let me. Let me give you something. Let me give you this." His gloved hands were fierce against her wrists. Oh, she wanted to see! She felt her staggering heartbeat in her groin. He pushed her hands against either side of her face, not binding her or holding her, but asking her _No, not you, please, let me touch, don't touch me_

_I dislike hands upon my person_

"Jareth," she whispered. All she could see of him in the tender darkness was his amulet glowing gold against his naked chest. "Let me be curious," he said. "I've never been _tame_ before."

She felt his breath in the darkness of her hair, hovering over her mouth. She parted her lips, tilted them up in offering, and he kissed her then, those sharp, shy bird-kisses, tasting her but darting away before she might do something like

_bite_

kiss him back. She put her hands on him, and felt him flinch. He stilled, came back to her, and said, "No. Wait. Try again." And this time she was able to fill her hands with the texture of his skin, feel his muscles over his naked flesh. Very little of his body was yielding, but he gave himself to her hands, and that was surrender enough, even if the touch seemed to frighten him. _Establish ties_ , she thought, _like the Little Prince did with the Fox. Establish ties. I must tame you. I must win your trust_.

The softness of his hair, the texture of raveled silk, slipped down over her face and her neck, and his mouth was the wet sting in that dry maelstrom. A darting, burning, tentative kiss tasted the ripe fruit of her hard nipple. She gripped the architecture of his shoulders, trying to pull him to her, or push him away, and cried out again.

"Am I hurting you?" he asked. "It was not my intention, to hurt."

"No, Jareth." Her fingers in the dark found their way to his face, tickling slowly up his neck.

"Then why do you sound like you're receiving a whipping? You never made those sounds when you were alone with yourself, thinking of me."

"I was alone then," Sarah said quietly, finding his mouth by touch. He drew her forefinger in and suckled it, and she made more sounds, sounds she couldn't help making.

"I see," he said, amused, and she wondered if his owl's eye could see her, wanton and blushing in the dark. Leather gloves now, false skin fingertips touched her other breast, lips tasted… _oh. Oh, God_. She heard him laugh, as suppressed as her cries had been, amused and not unkind. "You're singing me a little song, Sarah. How nice."

"Why?" Sarah asked. "Why are you doing this? Why now?"

The slow torture of his caress did not abate. "I asked and I asked you, 'What would you have of me, Sarah?' And you said 'Nothing, nothing, nothing for myself.'" His gloves traced probing patterns down her belly, infuriatingly investigated her navel. "But you want this, and I can give you this." His lips followed his fingers, and he tasted her flesh.

"But you," she said. "You—" and she tried to hold him to her, or offer him his freedom, but she didn't want him to fly from her, not now.

"Just you," he said. "I like to see you bend to my will. And my will is to have you. Have you satisfy my curiousity," he whispered to her in her personal darkness, her personal hell. "Will you let me? Even if it makes you cry?"

She gave one sobbing gasp. She would let him play her, inside and out, as adept in his hands as a crystal orb full of dreams. "Yes," she said, surrendering her will to him. _If this is what you must have from me, have it. You can do what you want with me and I'll do what you say. I can deny you nothing. Not after this. Not after this gift_. And thought shattered as he squeezed her breasts with a grip hard enough to murder songbirds, murmured her name in her ear.

Curiousity was such a gentle, childlike word. She hadn't realized what excessive depths of depravity it could contain. Jareth was curious, and curious about her. Every time her hands drifted from her head, he grabbed them and forced them inexorably back. He would hold her wrists, fierce, in one hand, as his mouth and his other hand stroked and touched and tasted and tortured her body. Only when she forgot she had hands would he let her go.

She tried not to climax, tried to hold it back, but his tongue and fingers teased it all unwilling from her. She could feel him watching her as she cried out, and he parted her thighs and stroked her gently there, which only made it worse, shuddering, aching, twisting like a gut-wound as his kisses on her skin and his gentle petting of her sex plucked the little death out of her. He pushed two fingers into her, roughly, smooth with her juices, and she cried out again and came again, obediently, when he asked her to, on his leather gloves.

"It doesn't hurt?" she heard him say, in a tone containing equal parts marvel and mastery.

"No," she choked out. "Please—more?" and then his wet gloved fingertips were in her mouth, spreading her lips, rolling her own taste over her tongue, interspersed with his lips, his tongue, tasting her, tasting herself. She felt his weight, so slight for someone so strong, roll over her leg and rest over her. She wanted to hold on to him, wanted to wrap her legs around him and force him to give more of himself. Her hips thrust against him, but he tangled his legs around her thigh, spread his hands down over her arms, and kissed and kissed her as though her mouth was the world, his kingdom entire.

 _That wet heat on my hip is his erect cock_ , she thought. _And it's for me_. The idea smothered her, and in the space between breathing and not breathing, she climaxed again, and the very last breath left her body. _Yes_ , she thought. _Even my last breath for you. Jareth. Whatever you want from me, even my death, you can have. I'll give you all_.

He breathed into her, and gave her back her life, and rested still against her body, his face pressed sweetly close to hers.

"Truly?" he murmured.

"Yes," she said. "Anything. Anything you want."

"Even death?"

She breathed out the sorrow that word inspired. "Life is beautiful," she said. "But yes, even death, if you want that from me."

"Swear to me," he said bitterly, as if this too were part of some formula, some compulsion, some spell he was forced to read out whether he would or no.

"I swear it!"

He fit himself between her thighs. She felt him, the massive strength of him, against her gates, which had opened wide to receive him as an ambassador. He was too much, too large, too real. She was being impaled. Her soul would squeeze out through her eyes; there was no room for herself when he was inside her.

"Woman," he said, rocking slowly inside her. "Flesh. Your mortality is sweet. Better than any dream." And he put his mouth over her again, sucking out her breath, her cries of pain and her cries of desire.

* * *

**Next… Chapter 19: "Faces Under Glass"  
**

* * *

_"The Isle is full of noises…" is a reference to Shakespeare's The Tempest. All text in **bold** is adapted from The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupery, which is a foundational text for both this chapter and, probably, this entire story._

_Those curious as to exactly why Jareth has capitulated are encouraged to view Michaël Dudok de Wit's "The Monk and the Fish," a short animated film. Sarah's the Monk and Jareth's the Fish._


	19. Faces Under Glass

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Soundtrack for Chapter 19:
> 
> "Kids"-MGMT  
> "Sour Times"-Portishead  
> "Dream Brother"—Jeff Buckley

**Faces Under Glass**

* * *

 

In the morning, she found three immaculate drops of blood on her underwear, apposite as the portent of Snow White's mother. It was as if she had been a virgin. Or as if, despite all his care, he had pricked her with his talons after all.

She was full of a quiet wonder. She refused to name it joy. She refused to consider it at all. It had been, whatever it was, only for one night. She wouldn't speculate on more. Speculation was a form of greed. But her body hurt from the experience, reminding her constantly of what they'd shared, as she put on a carefully conserved clean t-shirt, or bent to roll the hammock into a bindle, or hitched her bag onto her back. Whatever had happened, had indeed happened. It had been a dream, but it had been real. A gift, freely given and freely taken, signifying friendship.

"Hmm," Sarah said, evaluating the high open portal in front of her. The Libraryinth had come to an end, and here was a doorway out, most tempting. Sarah didn't particularly like what she saw on the other side. She could smell something acrid beyond it, and hear nothing. And the thickness of smoke or fog hung round about this new path, obscuring her view.

"What do you think, Yimmil?" Sarah asked. "Should we look for some other road?"

"Dunno," Yimmil said, crouching forward to get a better look. "This is Royal Road. Terrible task. Big danger." He climbed down from her shoulder and hopped forward to stare at the path beyond the gate, looking first left then right, like a child obeying the rules about crossing the street. He came back to Sarah, who got down on one knee. He patted her face. "Lotsa traps. Lotsa tricks here. But it go straight."

"What, straight to the Castle?" Sarah said, confused and delighted. "And straight out of the Labyrinth?"

"Yes. This that road."

"So it did exist!" Sarah said cheerfully. It pleased her to think that despite all the tricks and traps of the Labyrinth, she'd at least been told the truth the first time that there really was a direct route to the center of the Labyrinth. Even if it didn't go all the way out, it would be a useful shortcut.

"Yes-Ma'am-Lady, listen!" Yimmil insisted. "This is direct way to Castle. Also, most dangerous way."

"So you don't think we should take it?" Sarah asked.

Yimmil sucked on a fingertip. "Dunno. Yes-Ma'am-Lady smarter than dumb road. Smarter than me. If you say go, we go. But let me go first. Goblins strong. Hard to hurt. Maybe keep Yes-Ma'am-Lady getting hurt. Getting killed. If we go, me go first. Or we _not_ go."

Sarah frowned, not liking the idea of Yimmil taking risks for her. He seemed so fragile, so innocent, so simple. But she'd learned, travelling with him, that he was none of these things. He was older, he was wiser, and he was stronger than her, at least as far as the Labyrinth was concerned. She refused to underestimate him.

"Okay," Sarah said finally. "We'll take this road." She lifted her eyes to the mountain behind her in the near distance to orient herself. The road seemed to run at an oblique angle to the one she'd been on. It would take her further out, further through—provided it really was straight. "We should turn left," she said. "I'll follow you, Yimmil. Don't go too quickly, or I'll get lost."

The first thing she knew was a cold so cold that it bit her. She zipped up her coat and pulled Finnvah's scarf around her mouth like a muffler, and stuffed her hands in her pockets. It was so cold. The smoke wasn't mist, it was fine particulate bits of snow that seemed to want to find their way through the denim of her jeans to prick individually against her pores, against her face through the scarf to cruelly sink into the very bones of her skull. It was also ash, so bitter-fine it instantly rose against her throat to make her cough.

"Okay, Yes-Ma'am-Lady?" Yimmil asked, pausing to look at her. He seemed unaffected by the cold or the pain, but he stepped carefully through the snow and ash with high steps. It seemed to be drifting down out of nowhere. It was beautiful stuff, like something out of a storybook Christmas morning, but it made the way difficult, and she would have preferred the view if it had been behind the double-glazed windows of her father's living room. The softness of it made the road feel slippery under her feet, as if it were all iced over underneath.

"I'm okay," Sarah said, and coughed. She looked behind her to see the gate, and couldn't.

"We go careful," Yimmil said. "Watch out for traps!"

It was a very long walk. She tried to keep her eyes on Yimmil, but the footing was so treacherous that there were long moments when she had to look at her feet.

"Tripwire!" Yimmil cautioned, holding up a hand for her to stop. He reached over and plucked the wire, and jumped back just in time as a crude set of spears jutted forth from under a bank of snowy ash. A portion of the path, momentarily cleared, showed her reflection. _Black ice, or a mirror_ , she thought, shivering and shaken. _This direct route is also Certain Death, without a goblin Sherpa_.

"Who set all these traps?" she gasped an hour later, having safely avoided a huge bashing hammer and a series of iron spikes, and other deadly snares. They felt like something not natural to this road, something added by clever and malicious people, perhaps by goblins. Sometimes there were bones poking out of the drifts, white and meatless ivory. She tried not to look at these. When the traps went off, or when her feet skidded in the drifts, she saw her own reflection dimly. And sometimes there were other faces, faces that if she could just look closer, she might recognize…

"Armies," Yimmil said indifferently. "Magicians. Enemies. Cov-ee-tus. And goblins, too."

"The goblins set some of the traps, huh?"

"Road is how we came in, Yes-Ma'am-Lady. Didn't want others coming in too. Some come, some go. All is traps and danger."

Sarah looked up, wishing there were some way to climb the walls and walk over the top anyway. She looked at Yimmil, who had become a miniature Yeti, a goblin dipped in white fluff. Sarah sighed and hopped up and down on the balls of her feet, trying to keep warm. L.A. had removed her winter hardiness. She hadn't been back to New England since… well. There were things it was better not to think about.

Her shoes slipped from under her and she fell forward, bashing her arms and her cheek against the surface of the road. "Ow," she moaned. Everything was cold, and she hurt. Her fingers were so numb.

Her breath didn't fog the surface of the path, and she could see herself easily. She was as white as a sheet from crown to shoulders, like a ghost of herself, or a caricature of one of the damned souls in Hell. And just over her shoulder, as if leaning down to help her, was her mother.

Sarah whipped her neck around, but she wasn't there. Of course Linda wasn't there. That was the story of Linda's life, as far as Sarah was concerned. Reflections, but no substance. And anyway, Linda was dead. _Mom_ , she thought, but kept her eyes shut as she got painfully to her feet.

"Okay, Yes-Ma'am-Lady?"

Sarah gave him a thumb's up and adjusted Finnvah's scarf over her mouth and ears again.

"Don't look at feet," Yimmil cautioned. "Road dangerous. Can take people… other places."

"But you know where to go?"

"Yes," Yimmil said.

They were only a handful of hours in when it happened, when what had been bound to happen had happened. Yimmil hadn't seen the trap or been tall enough to set it off. But Sarah had. She felt the cobweb-thin line pressing against her chest in a moment before she realized what she'd done. Turning, jumping back, thinking to avoid the danger or at least take it against her more protected back, she'd intuitively turned the wrong way. A series of whisker-fine barbs flew out of a drift of the snow and embedded themselves in her face and hands and the front of her coat. She didn't even feel them at first, because she was so cold. But the barbs were strange and cruel, twisting in on themselves, and she felt the burning pain of them as they began to screw themselves into her flesh.

"Yimmil!" Sarah croaked. "I'm hurt!" She found one of the darts in her face with cold-numbed fingers and slowly pulled it out. It came out tipped in her own red blood, a long needle the length of her index finger, something made of glass, or ice. Yimmil came over to her and helped her remove the others. They made a little pile of small bloody malice, twenty-six in number, from her hands and face and coat. Yimmil was more dexterous than she, and it took a small amount of time to find all the darts. One had missed her left eye by less than an inch.

"Yes-Ma'am-Lady, we should leave road," Yimmil said. "You bleeding!"

"Yes," Sarah said. She felt dizzy and stupid with pain and cold. "Scout ahead? Find a way off."

Yimmil saluted her.

Sarah stared around herself in a daze. She looked down at the pile of barbs and angrily swept them aside with the sleeve of her jacket.

_The death of me_ , she thought, and stared at the glass of the path she'd cleared with her gesture. _This place will be the death of me. By accident or design, Jareth, or the Labyrinth itself, kept me off this road before. Please let it have been by design. Please let me get away this time. I made a mistake._

She remembered Jareth's warning, the one she'd ignored. _"I know everything. I know the risks you take because you believe I'm standing very near you, protecting you, like a talisman all made of Love. But don't mistake me for your guardian angel. I'm not there. You are alone."_

She leaned slowly forward until her head touched the mirror of the path. She could see faces again, faces behind her. And if she listened, she could hear voices. Voices calling.

_Mom?_ She thought, brushing more of the ash and snow from the mirror's surface. _Mom? Is that you?_

_Those darts were poisoned_ , she thought. _Poisoned._

_Poisoned._

In the reflective surface of the mirrored road, she saw her mother's face instead of her own, smiling at her. _I've made a mistake_ , she thought. She crawled forward, crawled inside the mirrored surface, crawled inside her most terrible memory.

* * *

"Mom."

"Sarah. I need you to be strong for me, one last time. I need you to do what Jeremy can't."

"Shut up," Sarah said.

"Sarah," said her mother. "Little pup. You remember when Ambrosius was hit by the car? You insisted on going to the vet with us. You knew what was going to happen."

"He was my dog!" Sarah moaned.

"We had to put him down, do you remember? He was in so much pain. So much pain. This is no different. I need you to take care of me."

"You're my mother!" Sarah said. "You're supposed to take care of _me_. Mom!"

* * *

Toby had picked her up at the airport. She found herself surprised at how much he'd grown; he was still a boy, but Sarah could see adulthood just under his skin, ready to burst forth. The in-between time between youth and adulthood. She felt utter love for him. _The same age as I was, when I ran the Labyrinth_ , she thought. "You're the welcoming committee?" she'd asked, after hugging him soundly. He picked up her carry-on suitcase and loaded it into the car. "When exactly did you get your license?" she'd asked. "You're not even fifteen yet."

"Learner's permit," he said, starting the car. He let the engine idle and turned to look at her. He was pale. So pale. "Sarah," he said, little Adam's apple wobbling in the weight of some unspoken emotion.

"I know, Toby." Without even thinking about it, she rummaged in the pockets of her winter coat, looking for her cigarettes, and remembering they were in her hoodie under her coat, and she almost ripped off the buttons trying to get to them, just holding on to them, cracking the window.

Toby had looked at her, his blue eyes dark with emotion. Everything seemed to happen in slow motion. The worst memories. "Your mom," he said, his voice cracking. And with that, Toby held onto the steering wheel with a lover's embrace and cried, letting his tears spill out all over his arms and the plastic of the car.

"Oh, Toby." In self-hatred and anger and horrible choking love she'd embraced her brother, who slid over and into her arms like sad dog, and she'd petted his hair and hugged him until his sobs devolved into sniffles.

She hadn't been able to cry herself, or Linda, yet. She was cold and numb. She'd managed to get herself on the plane, tickets booked and bought for her, only by pretending that this was some sort of family reunion, with nothing terrible waiting to confront her at the end of the trip. But Linda was there, at the house she and Jeremy had purchased as a vacation getaway, in upstate New York, delightfully equidistant from her father's house and their mutual alma mater. And Linda was waiting there, in the last stages of terminal cancer, waiting and dying. And Toby was here, weeping in her arms.

Some evil part of Sarah found it within herself to resent the hell out of Linda and Jeremy for finally managing to play a dirty trick on Toby. Linda wasn't even his mother, and here he was crying like it was Karen lingering on the edge of death. And she resented their father, yes, resented him too. It would have been kinder for him and Karen to have absconded with Toby to some nice holiday, maybe Disneyworld, while she was dancing attendance at the last days of her mother's life.

The worst trick of all. The very worst card in the deck. And Sarah knew that ultimately these tears of Toby's, given for her sake, were her responsibility. Her father wasn't here for Linda or Jeremy. He was here because of Sarah, because of his firstborn.

"It's okay, Toby," she said. "Thank you, sweetheart. I know you care. Shh. Thank you. It's okay. It's okay." She had repeated that stupid litany, over and over, until he calmed and moved away from her.

"Seriously," Sarah said. "Thank you for being here for me. It helps." She lit her cigarette and handed it to him. "Here," she said. "Smoke that. It'll put things in perspective."

Toby had taken a drag and coughed, handing it back with distaste. "Tastes like cat piss!" he said, making a face.

"Just remember that if you're ever tempted to start." Toby cracked out a laugh, and Sarah smoked the rest in silence, whistling silent streams of smoke out the cracked-open window. She exchanged significant, full-feelinged glances with Toby in that silence. Toby expressed his sympathy and Sarah her resilience and her love for him, and he returned her love back, all without words. Toby had a gift for that. He had a gift for love. If it was Toby dying, she wouldn't be so calm about this.

"I love you, Toby," Sarah had said, rolling up the window and opening the car door. "Switch places with me. I'll drive, you navigate. Okay?" She threw the butt down into the snow, where it sizzled and died.

_I don't… I can't… I don't want to see this_ , Sarah thought. _God, let me wake up. I can't go through this again. I can't. I can't._

The kitchen of the pretty farmhouse was crowded with food and people. The people, unlike the food, were familiar. It wasn't two o'clock and yet the wineglasses were out, every glass filled. _It's like a funeral and she's not even dead yet_. But the sense of Linda's pending death, her last walk, permeated throughout the summer house Linda and Jeremy had purchased for vacations and parties and artistic gatherings, like a bad smell.

"I'll take your stuff to your room," Toby volunteered. "It's the green one on the first floor."

"Sarah," Karen said with a genuine smile, as if this, too, were just some sort of joke, as if Sarah were here on a whim, "So glad you got here safely. Here, let me get your coat." And neat as any of the hostess' tricks Karen performed as the wife of a state Supreme Court judge, she folded the black wings of Sarah's one winter coat back from her body and bore it to the cloakroom. "Seth couldn't come?" Karen asked brightly. Sarah was suddenly too tired for pretense or politeness, too tired to decipher if Karen were just slightly drunk or being passive-aggressive with the question.

"I asked him not to come. It's easier this way."

"I wish he had come. You need someone, Sarah," Karen said. And Sarah was momentarily in love with her stepmother, and hating her simultaneously, for being right. She had asked Seth not to come, and he hadn't fought or pressed the issue. Seth never argued with her on any subject. She had the burden of carrying the emotional and authoritative weight of their relationship in one. _And I'm three weeks late_ , Sarah thought. _Isn't this just terrific. Someone else to fear for. Someone else to lose, if I go through with this happy accident_. _Just let me get through today, God. Just today. I'll ask again tomorrow, but give me today._  
  
"Princess," her dad said, hugging her once the unwrapping was done.

"Daddy," Sarah said, meaning to say _Dad_ , stiff and awkward, and hugging him just a moment longer than politeness's sake required. Karen was right; she did need someone. She had her father, at least. Someone put a plate of food into her hand, someone else put a full wineglass in her other hand. She ate without tasting, without meaning to. And suddenly she stopped.

"Where's Jeremy?" Sarah asked quietly.

"He's with your mother, Princess," Robert replied. His face was solemn. He grieved for her. And maybe, perhaps, probably, for himself.

"I want to see her," Sarah said. "Can I see her?"

"Your mother is in the nook off the study," Karen said. She came forward and held Sarah's hands in hers, and made sure Sarah was looking at her. "This will be very hard for you," Karen said quietly. "Your father and I love you, very much."

"Okay," Sarah said, disentangling herself. "Thanks."

* * *

"Mom?"

Her mother's breath was a growl in her chest, the panting growls of a dog run over by a car, drowning in her own pain. So shrunken, so yellow, so strangely bloated by her body's own poisons. Somehow she had expected something more… medical than all this. There was only the simple hospital bed, the simple I.V drip standing empty in the spare bedroom where she'd chosen to die. No machines going blip or ping, no nurses in white caps waiting on the dying woman. Just the silence of her mother's pain and her slowly approaching death that was taking too long in the coming. Sarah carefully picked up Linda's hand and stroked it, found her voice and called her name. She didn't remember what she told her mother. The entire experience was a species of shock that never abated, never paused.

"She looks very bad, I know." Jeremy standing there next to her, looking down at the woman he'd married, had stolen away from Sarah and her father, when she was ten. His touch on Linda's hand was so gentle. For a moment, she ceased her death-rattle, ceased to breathe. Jeremy waited, his own breath quiet, until the breathing resumed.

"She fights," he said quietly. "It's been such a long fight. I think she's been fighting, waiting for you, Sarah."

"That's an appalling thought," Sarah said curtly. "How long has she been this way?"

"A few days," Jeremy said. "Let me show you how to administer the Oxy." He took a brown bottle, pasted with a prescription label, and measured out a series of careful drops into the pipette. "Linda, dearest," he said, gently parting her lips, stroking her chin until they parted. "It's time for your medicine. Sarah's here, darling." He squeezed the drug slowly onto the back of her tongue, and rubbed her throat gently until she swallowed. "Good. Thank you, dearest. You'll feel a bit better." He set the bottle aside and picked up a clipboard, noted the time by his watch. "Every four hours by the clock," Jeremy said. "We have to be very careful. This is powerful stuff."

Slowly, like a motor breaking down, Linda's growls came in slower and slower pauses until they stopped, and she was breathing without pain.

"She left you a letter," Jeremy said, pulling it out from the back of the clipboard and handing it to Sarah. "She knew… you probably wouldn't be here before she stopped making sense."

"Okay," Sarah said. Then she looked at Jeremy, really looked at him. He looked not much better than his wife on her deathbed, and smelled less nice. "Why don't you get some food and a shower? I won't leave her alone. I promise."

Jeremy scrubbed the back of his neck with one arm. "I don't like to leave her," he said, the veneer of his posh cultivated faux-London accent breaking down into broad New England vernacular.

"It'll be all right," Sarah said, pinching the letter so hard her fingers hurt. "I promise it will be all right. Give yourself twenty minutes. We'll still be here when you come back."

When he left, Sarah opened her mother's last letter.

**Sarah**. No prelude, no "Dear Sarah," just her name.

**By the time this letter comes into your hands, I believe I'll be very near my death, but probably too far away from it to bring either of us much comfort. I'm told that the drugs will ease some of my pain, but not all of it. I need you to be strong for me, one last time. I need you to do what Jeremy can't.**

**I need you to help me end things, if I haven't already.**

**I'm tired of arguing with Jeremy about this. He loves me, but he's refused to listen to anything I say on the subject. He's very afraid. He isn't as brave as you are.**

**Sarah, little pup. You remember when Ambrosius was hit by the car? You insisted on going to the vet with us. You knew what was going to happen. We had to put him down, do you remember? He was in so much pain. This is no different. I need you to take care of me. You were there for him, helped him with one last kindness, to help him die without suffering any more. Be kind to me, Sarah. I am so afraid. I'm in so much pain.**

**You mustn't think I'm asking you for anything cruel, Sarah. It will only hurt you, and Jeremy. It won't hurt me. Help me consummate my wedding with the infinite, my sweetest daughter. Help me open that door.**

**Please do this for me. I love you.**

**Linda.**

_Mom, how can you even ask me to do this? How can you ask me to murder you?_

"Remember Ambrosius. Merlin replaced Ambrosius. Replace me."

_I'll never have another mother._

* * *

When she left the silent room, Jeremy was in the lounge, alone, sitting in one of the chairs near the fireplace. Sarah dragged the ottoman a short distance away and sat down on it, facing him. His long hair was damp from the shower, and there was an untouched plate of food by his arm, and an untouched wineglass, full, in his hand.

"So," Jeremy said. "Your mother's letter."

"Yes," Sarah said, turning and throwing it into the fire.

She was used to Jeremy now, but she'd never been precisely comfortable with him. Occasional, yearly visits to their townhouse in the city, where they'd set aside a room for her indifferent, careful vacations. She hadn't been able to be comfortable with Jeremy or her mother. The coin of their mutual admiration was all spent on each other. It was as if she didn't exist, couldn't exist, in the space of their energy.

There had been a careful détente between Sarah's two families when she turned fifteen, a ceasefire that Sarah herself had negotiated. She had acknowledged that if her mother had been in her shoes, in the Labyrinth, that Linda would never have won her back. At fifteen, she had felt years older than her mother. At fifteen, she'd been able to forgive her mother. There had been the occasional mixed family Thanksgiving or Christmas. She found herself admiring her father, and Karen, and secretly rolling her eyes at her mother and Jeremy, with their glamourous, carefree, flimsy existence. She had loved them anyway.

She wasn't that mature any more. This hurt too badly. But Jeremy, as strange as he was, was at least here, and present. Sarah supposed that he might have left her mother when she first became sick, traded her in for a younger, fresher model. But here Jeremy was, faithful in sickness as in health.

"We should have told you much sooner," Jeremy said, brittlely, staring into the fire. "But we… wanted you to be free of it. At least until the very end."

"I wish you had called on me sooner," Sarah said. "I could have been here, at least."

"We were trying to be kind."

"It was cruel," Sarah whispered. She stared at Jeremy. He stared back.

"You look," he said, "painfully like your mother at your age. Painfully."

"Nothing like my father, then?" Sarah asked, feeling defiant.

"You're sturdier than Linda. Taller, stronger. You get that from Robert. But I wish you'd gotten that from me. I wish I'd been your father, Sarah. The story of my life seems to be stealing things from better people. Look at you, sitting there in your white shirt, staring a hole into my face." He took a careful sip of his wine. "You remind me of Meander's Queen. Your mother was just your age when we produced that play. She gave you her costume for dress-up in, when you were twelve or so."

"Thirteen," Sarah said. "I was thirteen."

"The best thing I've ever done," Jeremy said with certainty, taking another sip of wine. "Did I ever tell you that I actually met the Goblin King?"

"No," Sarah said. "But I'm not surprised."

Jeremy stood up and went to the bookshelf. On a dusty shelf near the bottom, he pulled out a little red cardboard case, and unwrapped the string around the button that closed it. Inside was a red composition book and a sheaf of untidy papers.

"He delivered Prospero's speech to me. In a madhouse. It was the most affecting performance I'd ever seen. 'Now my charms are all o'erthrown, and what strength I have's mine own.' I've never experienced anything like it, ever since. His memory. It haunts me."

Jeremy leafed through the notebook and turned to one perfectly inked page. "Through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered I have fought my way here to the gates at the very end of the Labyrinth. For my heart is warm where yours is cold, and my love is as strong as death." Jeremy laced the case back up. "I suppose I remade myself in his image, just like I remade his poetry in my image." He tossed the case into the fire, a secondary offering. "Love as strong as death."

He sat down in his chair again, boneless. "It's all a lie, of course. Love like that doesn't exist. Death is always stronger. If it didn't, Linda wouldn't be dead." He remembered his wineglass and drained it, threw that into the fire, too, the tertiary offering. Jeremy looked at Sarah again, his face as clean and calm and tearless as hers. "She is dead, isn't she."

"Yes," Sarah said. Her heart had turned to ice. "She died twenty-two minutes ago."

"Then it's Death that's as strong as Love," Jeremy said. He caressed Sarah's hair as he passed by her, going into the room where Linda's body waited for a last embrace. "Goodbye, Sarah."

In five minutes, Jeremy was going to climb into bed next to Linda and finish her sedative as neatly as he'd finished his last glass of wine. He was going to lie down and die next to her. Her father would try to keep the scandal quiet, but some pulp celeb rag would discover and run the story: _'Real Life Romeo and Juliet.'_ But she hadn't been there, and she hadn't seen that. What she had seen, eventually, was their bodies knit together as surely as their souls had been, silent and together, unparted in death.

One time, one last, last time, Sarah stared into the mirror, this time the mirror above the fireplace, and called out. "Jareth," she said. "Jareth, I need you."

In this memory, as in the past, there had been no answer.

Sarah grabbed the mirror and pulled it off the wall. "Jareth. Jareth, please!"

He hadn't answered. He had never answered, when she'd called. He never would. He never would again. He had already answered her. He had already told her everything, she just hadn't wanted to see it. "Is that what all this is about?" she shrieked, breaking free of the memory, breaking out of the pattern.

_"There will be one last door I'll need your help to open."_

_"Mortal woman, you'll be the death of me."_  
  
 _"Flesh. Your mortality is sweet."_

And she had sworn, _"Even death, if you want that from me."_ But she hadn't thought it was his death. She had thought it was her own. She'd been seeing things backward from the very beginning, just like she'd been running the Labyrinth backward. It was all a trick, a cruel trick, a trick he'd been playing on her from the very beginning. He wasn't asking for her to die _for_ him. He was asking her to give death _to_ him.

She fell to her knees, the mirror sliding out of her hands onto the floor. "Are you going to make me do to you what I did to my mother? Answer me!" she screamed.

Silence prevailed.

"Tell me," Sarah begged the mirror on the floor. "This can't all have been for nothing! I can't do this again! Don't make me do this again!"

_Ah_ , whispered her conscience. _But the only one it will hurt will be you, Sarah And you made a promise_.

" _Que sera, sera…"_ sang a shadowed voice on the other side of the mirror. She couldn't tell if it was Jeremy's voice, or Jareth's. _"Whatever will be, will be… the future's not ours to see…"_

She leaned over the glass. She could see wavering light and uncertain images within. "The future isn't ours to see," Sarah muttered in a broken voice to the mirror. "But the past is." She looked at her wrist. She saw her favour there now, shining with silver brightness. She felt the magic that would come to her call. _Beautiful Labyrinth_ , Sarah prayed. _Show me more. Show me what I need to see. Please, please. Help me save myself. Help me save him_. _Show me how to save us both from this course._ She looked down. Somewhere, far below in its depths, Sarah saw a dark-haired woman beckoning her forward. "Help me," Sarah said. She leaned closer to the mirror. She leaned against it. She took a deep breath and pushed through, into the arms of Meander's Queen.

* * *

**Next… Chapter 20: "The Queen's Oubliette"**

* * *

_Now I've given you the crux of the mystery. Jareth, the Goblin King, has tricked Sarah into promising to bring him his death. Will Sarah be forced to keep the unwitting promises she made, or will she find some way to once more defy the Goblin King, this time to his salvation?_

_Sometimes I feel I've been a bit too heavy-handed in my foreshadowing, but if you glance over this story again, Jareth's position becomes more obvious. He's poised on the edge, certain that this is the best outcome, trying to have his way, and feeling a bit guilty as time goes on about taking advantage of Sarah, who does indeed mean a great deal to him. So don't be mad. You must have known, with some part of your mind, that this was in the cards from the beginning._

_Which will prevail: Jareth's despair, or Sarah's courage?_

_Appreciation, hearts and tarts go out to my beta, Nyllewell, who offers inspiration and help both directly and in absentia. Special thanks also to Frances Osgood, who was a considerable resource and beautiful second-chair beta when I was mildly desperate._


	20. The Queen's Oubliette

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Soundtrack for Chapter 20:
> 
> "The Host of Seraphim" –Dead Can Dance  
> "The Makings of a Cyborg"—Kenji Kawai  
> "Waiting for the Miracle"—Leonard Cohen

**The Queen's Oubliette**

* * *

 

I see him. I know what he is.

What is he doing here?

I think I've forgotten my name, but I think I could remember his. He stands there in the dark room and he's all made of light, like the full moon. All the others come to him, wanting to touch that light. He doesn't want to be touched, but he allows it. A cat may stare at a queen. The mad may look at the moon. He is so beautiful. I know him and I've never met him before. The crowd gathers around him every day. I stay near the edge. I have to be near him. I can't bear it if he looks at me. The light he gives off—so bright—filters through other bodies and other hands. They come to him. I come to him. I hide. I can't help myself. Maybe he is death.

Good.

Where am I? Oh. Yes. I am in the Labyrinth. I am in the Labyrinth. It is a dark place, dark underground, full of corridors, full of monsters. Every day we're pushed and pulled and herded from one end of it to the other. Nothing makes sense. Soon the Minotaur will find us and eat us all, if we haven't died of despair yet. I see my left wrist. There is a scar there, twisting and ugly. The hand doesn't work well any more. I took the knife. I fought Charles for the knife. It cut me. He cut me. Cut me open. He cut—no. I won't remember.

Every day I follow him, as he waxes and wanes and waxes through other people. I watch him between them. I watch him from beneath my eyelids. Safer there. He is so dangerous. So wonderful. Why is he here? Follow him. Follow him. Stand behind him so he does not see. I will hurt if he looks at me. He mustn't ever look at me. He knows I am here. He doesn't look at me. I feel relief.

How many days since he came? I don't know. Time is strange. It flows backwards or forwards without me. He's always there in the dark room with all the rest of us. He's not anything like the rest of us. I have to go closer. But if he sees me, I may die.

He speaks to the others and they don't die. Maybe I won't die. Maybe I won't. Maybe I'll live. Exhausting, these choices. Cannot decide which choice would hurt more. Creep closer. Follow in the shadow of his orbit. Everything about him is perfect. He doesn't belong here. Nothing perfect belongs here. Can't bear it that he should be here. I must find a way to tell him to leave. He needs to go. Terrible things go on and on and on here. He mustn't ever experience such things. He must never be hurt.

Moon, Moon, leave your courses and drift away from here. _Tsukiyomi-No-Mikoto,_ God-of-the-Moon, grandmother whispers your name to me. Beautiful god, fly this place before they break you open and destroy you. But the demon has stolen my voice. At night I beat my fists against the walls and grunt, trying to speak. Trying to find the words. I can't speak to him if I can't find my voice. They've stolen my voice and buried it in the ground with—no. Mustn't say. Mustn't speak. Still I keep drawing closer to him. Take me in, beautiful god. Take me away from this world.

I hear him speak. He speaks like a man. When he speaks, everyone listens. I listen too. He watches. I watch him too. He likes games. He likes games where there is no winner, or loser, where there is only a test of the self against the self. Puzzles. Every piece he picks up he knows just where to place.

I am too close. I am close enough to smell him. He is all cool air that cuts through summer heat. He is dead leaves and wet streets after a rain. He smells like a newborn. He smells like-

I kneel down behind him. Not too close. I'm unworthy, and if he looks at me, he'll know. He'll send me away. But the others draw close. He speaks. He speaks to them. When I hear his voice, I remember Father. Father-not-Father, Father-my-Father. Father so gentle and kind to me. I remember Father: pictures of his other family, his lost family, sitting in the dark corner by the fireplace. Father has a tattoo on his arm, a chop of numbers, of which he is both ashamed and proud. Father loves Mother; Mother has trouble loving me.

"Don't worry, sweet Robin," Father says to me. He has named me early for the spring bird, the one who will come and make a nest outside my window, lay four blue eggs and tend them with jealous care. "Your mother loves you. And I love you, more than life." Oh, Father. There's so much agony in this family that precedes my birth. You never let it fall on my shoulders. You've given me your name, Zakar. But I lost it. I gave it away. Why did I give it away?

Mustn't think of that. The pain is too great. Watch _him_ instead, watch him speak in Father's voice. Protect him. Attend on him. Someday soon I will find the words to tell him about the danger here.

There are signals he gives so I can avoid his gaze. When he stands and sits, he moves his hands in a particular way. Watch his wrists. They are all whitewashed bones, snow-skin. Marvellous hands, so strong and so sharp. I don't know how he knows how afraid I am, but he knows. He's willing to be generous to me. I won't ask anything but to be near him. He'll allow this for just a little bit, I hope. Allow me to be nearby until the awfulness of me makes him impatient. Allow me to be near until he destroys me. That would be justice. I'll be near. I can let him decide. This is my appropriate humility in the face of his perfection.

* * *

Time flickers. I don't remember where I am, but I remember he is there near me. He hands me something. The blades of his nails never come close to hurting me. What is it? A cigarette. A torch. I don't smoke. But it has touched his lips; he's given it to me. I hold it carefully between finger and thumb. It's been touched by his lips. I hold it where his lips did. I watch it. It's precious. It's a sign. He knows I exist, that I'm there, and he doesn't resent it. _Oh, gift_. I watch the fire of it, let the ash of it spread over my hands. He takes it away from me, and touches my forehead. Cool fingers, cool as a washcloth on my head when I had a fever. Things clear, just for a moment.

 _Oh_ , I think. He doesn't despise me. He doesn't hate me at all. He knows me and doesn't hate me.

My name is Robin Zakar.

When is it? It is happening again, but I am ready for him to see me now. I'm ready to see him seeing me. I wait for him in the place he always waits at the beginning of the day. The light shines on him but he's the one shining on the light. He's brighter than the light. I wait, and he comes to me. His eyes are perfect, perfectly strange. He doesn't hesitate at all. My fingers tremble as I place them on him, the way so many others have. He is like Father. Father brought us together and made us a family. I remember Mother with Father. She would comb his hair for him, adjust his tie. _He_ isn't wearing a tie. But I can straighten his clothes. And I have a comb. It's the only thing I own. My hair is filthy and bad, and I can't get the comb through it any more. But I hold it up, and he bends his head to me, lowers those eyelids. His hair is bright and fine as cornsilk. It doesn't need a comb, but he lets me brush his hair for him.

* * *

I lose time. I lose time in the electric haze. I'm drooling everywhere. Messy. Edges of me crackling away into the ether. I don't exist anymore. Who am I? What is my name? There was somebody I was looking at. Somebody I was looking for. Is it Jared? Who is Jared? Is it him putting his arm around me, patting the edges of myself down into myself? I didn't want him to see; does he see me?

 _Jared_ , I think. _Jared, where are you now? Where is our baby? Are you together somewhere outside the Labyrinth?_

The moon is shining up at me from my knees. _Tsukiyomi-No-Mikoto._ It is the young god there. But his face. His face is also Jared's face. I am leaking everywhere. Now I am leaking from my eyes. He is looking at me, and it will be fine, because the tears keep me from seeing him.

He sings to me. He sings me secrets.

 **He came and he raped me,** he sings **.**  
 **Broke off a piece of his hate and left it inside.**  
 **But this above all to remember: we can survive.**  
 **We need not forgive. We are alive.**  
 **The pain of it is mortal and it will die in shame.**  
 **We are the same, the same, the same**.

 _Oh_ , I think. _Oh. It is you, after all, Jared_. I remember that I am a patient in the madhouse. And he is, too. _Prisoners_. We are prisoners together.

"I'm here," he says. He has spoken the first words I am able to understand, ever, from anyone in this Hell. "And I'll get you out of here. I promise you."

* * *

He takes the comb from me and untangles my hair.

I'm frightened by the pain that comes as my hair pulls under his hands. I remember that I'm dirty. I remember that I smell bad. I keep expecting he'll shove me away in disgust. I keep turning my head to look at him. His face is a mask. His will is inexorable, but he is kind. This must be necessary. I allow him to work. I feel like I can feel every pulse of his heartbeat under his skin. He is never sharp with me. He won't hurt me. I must trust that. I sigh and lean against his knee. I am sitting between his knees; my hair is in his lap. I understand that he is trying to trust me, too. We could hurt each other very easily. But I am safe here. Safe as an egg in a hidden nest. When the comb pricks on a tangle, he rubs the place where it hurts. And then he works the tangle free. Eradicates it. Destroys it. Hours pass. He is a god like God. He makes the crooked way straight. I close my eyes. His legs are a cradle; I am safely rocked to sleep. I dream.

We are flying, we are flying together. I am not surprised that he is an owl. I am not surprised that I am a robin. He could squeeze me to death in his claws and swallow me whole, but I know he will not.

"Do you see?" he asks. "Here is the entirety of a Kingdom underground. It is mine." We alight on the highest pinnacle of an obelisk. There isn't room for us both, but he tucks me under his wing. "Isn't it beautiful? And I will be King here, and you, you will be Queen."

"No," I say. But I move closer to his golden-white warmth. "I don't want to be Queen here. I don't want to be Queen at all." I peek out around the bars of his primary feathers. Here is a land serene, here is a land without a sun or a moon. Here are corridors and hallways, traps and delights, and doors. Here are walls. It is a labyrinth like the madhouse. It is a prison. Can't he see that?

Where we are when we have human bodies, the asylum-prison, that is a labyrinth, and it has a king who inspires dread and fear. The doctor is king, and brings Lethe-water with electroshock and pills and needles. His voice is law there. He has his courtiers and his subjects and his prisoners. Here everything is as brightly fascinating as a child's optimism. It is a young place. But he, the owl-king, the moon-king, _Tsukiyomi-No-Mikoto_ , how can he wish to be the King of a prison-kingdom? Someday it will be an old place. Someday it will no longer be innocent. Someday it will be cruel, and there will be no difference between the young King Owl who has made me a promise, and the awful King Madness who annihilates thought and personality. He will remake himself in the image of his own torturer. "I don't want to be Queen," I say. "I want to be free."

He bends his neck to stare at me. I know I have insulted him. It was not my intention. But now I'm remembering my voice; he has brought me to this enclosure to listen to me, and I need him to understand. I need him to understand that my fear is for him, and not for myself.

"I want you to be free, too," I say to him. "The Labyrinth is a prison. We can be free."

I have surprised him. I have stunned him. I have stunned myself. How is it I can say anything to this godling that he doesn't already know? And now he has questions for me.

"What would it look like?" he asks me. "What is it, freedom?"

"I don't know," I tell him. "You see me, and tell me I'm caged, and tell me you'll let me out. I want you to be free of the cage. I want _you_ to be out. I want _you_ to escape. I want that for you more than I want it for myself. Tell me how to set you free?"

"I don't know. Why would want to help me? Don't you know what I am? Don't you know how terrible and dangerous I am?"

"Yes. I fear you. I love you. I lay myself at your feet and let you rule me. But it only makes you my slave. The doctor fears you. He loves you. He lets you rule him. You make yourself his slave. Don't be a slave. What do you want for yourself?" We are speaking without spoken words, but I am shouting. "What do you want? Why did you come to me? Why did you wake me up? Why have you brought me here?" Robins cannot weep, but this one does, and every tear is a diamond. "Freedom. Give up your Kingdom, beautiful King, and you will be free."

"I don't know how," answers the owl. "Will you teach me how?"

"Ah, but I'm insane," I tell him. "What on earth could you learn from me?"

"I'm a fool," he answers. "Full of foolishness called ambition and the foolishness called vanity and pride. I thought I came here to learn from the doctor. But now I think that wasn't so. I came here to learn from you. Be my teacher, Robin. Be my judge."

"I'll be your friend," she said. "But never Queen," I say, with certainty. "Never that."

* * *

I know the doctor comes at my friend and torments him. Dr. Channard. He is bad, King Madness. He is the devil himself. My friend doesn't speak of him, but I can smell the doctor on his skin and his clothes, and I can feel the needles that have been stuck in his flesh, the brutal incisions the doctor tries to inscribe on his mind.

"We are to think only of ourselves together," my friend murmurs, as he draws me between his legs and pulls my hair over his lap. "And I have questions I need you to answer. There's so much I don't know."

I lean against his knee again. I wonder if I have the strength to speak. I wonder if the words will come. I am much closer to reality than I've tried to be in a very long time. He braids my hair, slowly. He asks me questions, also slowly, parsed out as segments of fruit.

"What is your name?"

"Robin Zakar." That is easy. I am Robin, the robin, the bird in spring who lays perfect blue eggs in a hidden nest, who greets the light with joy and flies free over all the richness of the world. That isn't my name, here. Here I have three names, and each one is a link in the chain that connect my shackles to this Hell. But my true name is Robin Zakar, and he will never make it into a cruel device.

"Robin," he asks later. "Is your baby alive, or is it dead?"

I wait. "Dead," I finally say. "Dead. Dead."

"Do you remember the death, or were you told about it?"

I think about this. "Told," I say. I don't remember at all. I remember… blood. "I," beginning the sentence, and finishing it fifteen minutes later, "killed him."

"So they told you. But who told you? Were they friends, or enemies?"

That answer is easy. I am so grateful that he understands how to ask questions that have answers. "Enemies."

Hours and hours pass in this conversation. Like a starveling with a shriveled stomach, he understands that too many words would choke me to bursting. He goes slowly. He gives me small pieces, small bits, delivered in tiny sips.

"What does he look like, your son?"

"Dark…" I say. I remember the Ray Bradbury story and use the writer's words in inertial forward motion, borrowing words as a bridge to what I mean to say about him. "Dark they were, and golden-eyed. My husband and my son."

"Would you have your son alive again?"

"Yes." No hesitation.

"Do you trust me?"

"…Yes."

"Do everything I ask, and you will have them back again, husband and son."

"How?"

A long silence. "By magic, of course. I only have a few coins in that currency to spend, here, but I intend to spend them all on you."

"No," I object. How can he think to do this for me? How will I be able to pay him back?

"Yes," he says. "Oh yes. I promised. Your freedom is mine. Agreed?"

"…Yes."

That evening, I am hurt as I am normally hurt. My husband, after all, hurt me in this way before. It is one of the orderlies who hurts me now. I haven't cared before today, but today I remember Jared, and how nothing we did together ever hurt. I wash and wash myself afterward, trying to become clean. I remember how my friend stank of the doctor. Now I'm afraid I stink of the orderly. I am fat, and my belly is like a stone. I won't think about that. But the next day, when he speaks to me, my friend knows. I remember his song. He's always known. There is, perhaps, nothing he doesn't know, but he asks me questions anyway, his fingers tangling and weaving my hair.

"He shares sex with you."

"He steals it from me," I spit.

"You don't want it?"

"No."

"I'll make him stop," he says.

I whip my head around and stare at him.

"Why?" I am angry. I can't cope with this life if I have hope for anything better. He is teaching me how to hope, and I hate him for that.

"Because I can."

"He'll punish you," I warn, and we both know I don't mean the orderly. We mean King Madness, the doctor.

"Let him try," my friend says, and laughs. I laugh too.

He keeps his promises. My friend always keeps his promises. I am afraid when he's late the next afternoon, and angry, too. I did warn him. Now that I'm awake I can't bear this place without him. I am angry that he's taken himself away from me. But he comes back, slightly damp around the edges, but fierce and proud. Whole.

He changes my clothing for me. He changes everything, for me. And he puts my hands on my round belly. "Tell me," he says. "Is your baby alive, or is he dead?"

 _No. No. No_. I move my hands away. I can't bear this. I try to hide from him behind my hands, but he won't let me hide. He looks at me with utter empathy. He understands.

"Robin," he says. "You must choose now. Shall your baby be alive now, or dead?"

I remember the orderly. I remember the doctor. They put their hands on me, intimately, bringing pain and hatred and shame. I look at my friend. He has never touched me intimately, and brings only hope, and lucidity. _Is my baby alive or dead_?

"Alive," I say. And for the first time, I feel my son move inside me. I hold onto him. _You are alive_ , I promise him. _You will live. I will fight for you._ I look at my friend. He is also alive. I will also fight for him. I nod, and my friend strokes the side of my face. He smiles at me.

Intimacy.

"Please," I say to him, as we sit together on one of the sprung couches. "What is your name?"

"Ah, I've misplaced it," he says. "Suppose you lend me a name, Robin."

"Jare—" I begin, thinking of the very best name in the world. But Jared is dead, that much I know without being told by friends or enemies. My friend isn't Jared. They look nothing alike. But Jared was my friend and my husband without vow or recognition. He taught me joy. My friend is like that, but he deserves his own name. "-eth," I finish. "Jareth. If you like."

"I do," he says. "Shall we look out together across my kingdom?"

"My kingdom is as great," I say, feeling a rightness to the words, but not knowing where they come from. "Come and see," I say.

* * *

I show him what's in my head. Together we can carry on conversations without words. I show him every beautiful thing I can think of. A little house, with a garden. A kitchen where I bake the week's bread, with raisins and nuts, for strength. No television, no radio, a big double-bed where we sleep like spoons. An infant in a sweet little cot, dreaming without fear. The roses come up and bloom around the windows. A place where nothing ever hurts again. And Jared is there, or is it Jareth? At first it is Jareth. But he hides his face in shadows until his skin is shadowed; his eyes come into balance, turn gold. Blond, fine hair becomes dark and springy. Only his voice remains of what he once was. I struggle. I touch Jared, try to peel the skin back from his face. "What about your face?" I ask Jareth. "What about your face? I believe I can love you just as much, just as you are. You don't have to hide."

"Let me wear this face," he says. "Don't question me. Do what I ask. Your freedom is mine."

We will have two children, I assure him. One we will name for Jared. And one we will call Sarah, for Father's mother. A prince, and a princess. They will never be afraid. They will never be weak. They will never make our mistakes.

"Why only two?" Jared asks, wrapping his arms around my waist. "I am fond of children."

"Two is all," I say. And I push him away. "Jareth. Jareth, don't do this. Don't become someone else."

"Let me wear that mask," he asks. "Let me become a mortal man. Let me live a mortal lifetime. I can be free. But only if you allow it."

The cost is too high. His will is terrible. It's a type of death he's taking on, to become something other than he is. It will eat out his essence from the inside, mortality. It will make him less than he is. It will end in a very real death. How can he want this? How can he want to be a mortal man, when he's so much more than that? I am on my knees before him. Perhaps if I show enough humility, he'll spare himself this. But he doesn't understand the gesture. He thinks I am without doubts, because I am so afraid.

"Don't question me," he says, sitting me beside him, on our little love-seat in our little parlor, in our little house, in our little town, in our little lives. "Let me rule you, and you can have everything you want."

"Behold your handmaiden," I say, with a little sadness. "Instruct me in what to do."

* * *

I am surprised when he brings a book to me the next morning. It is a composition book, with a red marbled cover.

"You're going to write for me," he says. "And you're going to write for yourself. The book is the key, Robin. It will set you free."

I uncap the pen. My hands are unsteady. His story comes slowly. It is about the Labyrinth. He will give up his Kingdom for me, he tells me, over and over again. He tells me his story. I write about how he can give up his prison, but not for me. He tells me he is Jared. I write about how he is Jareth. Everything comes from him, as it should. Everything is filtered through me, as is inevitable. We spend days, hours together, writing. There are only a few lines that I contribute without his prompting. "Through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered," I write. "I have fought my way here to the gates at the very end of the Labyrinth. For my heart is warm where yours is cold, and my love is as strong as death." He may be able to read, or not. But he laughs at me and says, "That is Love, Robin. And Love has no power over me. Make the Goblin King take his mask off. Let him be Jared for you."

"I haven't decided," I say. And when I look at him, he isn't my friend any more. He is Jared. His skin is like cinnamon, his eyes like honeycomb. The way his head sits on his shoulders, also like Jared. He could be his twin. He could be him. Even his scent is changed. Changed for me.

"Tomorrow," he says, "I'll give this story away. The day after that, you'll be free." I am not surprised when things come out as he has said. Reality itself obeys him; why can't I do so?

But there is one price I have to pay before I'm able to leave, and the price is him.

* * *

In the night, I hear footsteps outside my door. The baby jumps in fright as I do, and he helps me roll onto my side and against the metal frame of my bed. If they've come to hurt me I will kill them. I have the strength of a thousand righteous angers to help me. I will toss the bed on them. I will trample my feet into their faces and rip out their eyes with my hands.

"Robin," his voice breathes, soft and low, from the lock. I run to him and stare out through the keyhole into his eye. "Jareth," I breathe back. "You're free."

"I'm leaving tonight," he whispers. "I needed to tell you."

"You," I say. My eye blinks and I pull away. I hear metal scraping on metal; he's opened the observation trap on the door. I push my hands out to him and he takes them in his own. "You. You alone. Not me?"

"Tomorrow," he says. "You will be free tomorrow. I promise."

"Take me with you!" I'm begging. I hate myself for begging. It's never a voice I've had to use with him. How I hate that he's made me use it now. I clench his hands and he holds me, tight.

"I can't," he says. "The way out for me is different than the way out for you. If I take you with me, you'd only be free for a little while. And we'd be caught. But if you wait—"

"No."

"—Just wait for tomorrow, you'll be free and they'll never have you again. Free for always." Now his voice is the begging voice. And I hate hearing that note from him as much as I hate it from me. He is close to tears. "You must trust me. Robert Williams will come for you. Trust Robert. Go with him."

"Look at me, Jareth. No. Look." I crush his hands with all my strength and force him to see my face in the dark. "Doctor Channard will hurt me. He'll hurt me, and the baby. If you're not here, he'll hurt me to get you back. Don't leave me alone here!" For a moment I see that I've reached him. His hands in mine tremble, and I think he's going to break down and obey me. But he shakes his head, and unwinds his hands from mine. I try to hold him but he slips away. "I love you," I say sadly.

"Yes," he says, in the dark. "And if you do, come to the crossroads at midnight on Halloween. Any crossroads will do. Wait for me and when you see me, call my name and cover me with your coat. I'll be yours then. I'll be a mortal man. I'll go with you. I'll have a mortal life."

"You're not listening to me," I say. "You haven't listened to a word I've said. I don't want you to be someone else. I want you to be yourself."

"I need you," he says, and there's so much pain in those words it sounds as if he should be saying, "I am bleeding." There are no tears, though. Immortal hearts are dry as dust. "Please don't reproach me. I'm doing what's best."

"No," and I'm finally crying. God, how can he do this?

"If you cry out louder, you'll rouse the guards. They'll catch me and put me back in my box. Is that what you want?"

"… No." I'm quiet again, calm, my words a trembling whisper. "Never that."

"Then this is only goodbye for now," he says, and comes close to the hole in the door. "Beautiful Robin, kiss me for luck. Tonight is my only chance."

I stand on tiptoe to reach his lips. I can taste him, even the salt of his tears. Perhaps he's not immortal after all. But he's adamant as the iron door that he won't open for me. It's only our lips through that narrow window. My heart is heavy. I don't think I can forgive him. He's warm and alive and halfway free, and he's about to leave me, physically, or leave me by becoming someone else.

"Only goodbye for now. Remember, Robin. Halloween. The crossroads. My name. Your coat."

And then he's gone.

* * *

October 31st arrives. I am prepared. This is what he wants, so this is what I will do. My coat is too small now for me to wear, but it will fit _him_.

There is a knock at my door. There have been many knocks at the door, and I've answered them all. Usually it's Robert Williams, or someone he's designated to look out for me. There has been paperwork to sign. There have been court dates to attend. Jareth, my friend, has kept his promises. Now it's a matter of hours before I keep mine.

But this isn't Robert. This is some other man. "John Company," he says mildly. "I've come on behalf of the Goblin King." He is smarmy and rich. I dislike him on sight. But he's said the magic words. Anything I must do, I will do. If he's come in Jareth's name, he holds answers. He can help me understand if my decision is the right one. I let him inside.

He looks around my kitchen with distaste, judging me unkindly with one unkind look. "Maryam Billings. I'm the Goblin King's brother. So to speak. Sorry it took so long to get in contact with you."

"He has a message for me?" I am not particularly hopeful, as he doesn't know my true name.

"No. He's got nothing important to say to you. He really doesn't care about you, you know. He cares about what you can do for him." He stares at my belly, and I want to hide the baby from him. I put my hands over him and feel him kick with sympathy. This man is our enemy, even if he is Jareth's brother. Perhaps because he is Jareth's brother.

"You're going to go to him, tonight, at the crossroads? Save him from the Teind? Is that your plan?"

I stare at him, saying nothing.

"Do it," he commands me. "I'm tired of his wishy-washy bullshit, and this will take care of him for once and for all. But I thought you ought to understand just exactly you're agreeing to. The Gentry have rules, even if one of them has decided to go… slumming among humanity."

"Talk faster," I tell him, turning away to put the kettle on. "Say what you have to." Midnight is four hours away.

"If you whisk him away from his people, he'll live a mortal life. But it'll be on humanity's terms. He'll have to make himself over in your image. Eventually, it's certain he'll forget who he was. He'll grow old. He will die. He'll suffer every moment, and be prey to all the sickness and infirmity to which the flesh is heir. And then, there are certain factions among the Gentry who owe him. They'll be out for revenge. And there he'll be, in domestic bliss, with no magic at his call to defend himself. Or you. Or your baby. Fair warning."

"Why are you telling me this?" I ask. I think I will wait until the water is boiling and slap him across the face with the kettle. Perhaps I'll even manage to scald him.

"Someone has to," John Company says, as if all this is obvious. "It's like Janet and Tam-Lin all over again. This time, my brother could make the sacrifice he was meant to make. Only you stand in the way. One ugly blot on a nice clean page."

"I don't know those people," I say. I pull out one, only one mug, and drop a chamomile teabag inside.

"Fat with another man's child and ignorant as a pig," he says, disdainfully. "Oh, he's certainly had to make do. It's obvious he hasn't thought this through. Don't _you_ have any doubts?"

I tap my foot on the floor and look over at the clock. Company takes the hint. His voice becomes more sweetly coaxing the more terrible his words are.

"Listen, you sow. The Gentry don't love. You're horses we ride. You're cattle we herd. He'll never be able to love you, and he'll be chained to you for the rest of his short little life. A rather sad fate if you think about it. That is, if you care about him, and aren't just using him like Dr. Channard did."

My hands and feet feel frozen. The kettle whistles. I remove it from the heat. I do not throw it at his face. "What if I didn't claim him?" I ask. He smiles. It is a snake's smile, cold and cruel, victorious.

"If you don't, well. He'll live forever, won't he? He'll be perfect and unchanged. He'll be immortal. Beautiful. Forever and ever, just as he is now. And I'm sure he can find a wife among his own people to keep him company. Fae women, Maryam Billings, are so beautiful they mock the idea of beauty itself. Yes, I'm sure he might find a wife among the Gentry to ease the burden of his days and the memory of his trials." John Company smirks at me. "I must say, I'd prefer you make the former choice and bring him down to your level. I'm not ready for any doors to open just yet. No tea for me, I see." He gives me a bow, a strange bow, like something given to royalty, but terribly mocking. "I'll leave you to decide. Goodnight."

He is gone in a swirling of autumn leaves and ten-dollar bills.

I am aghast.

I do not go. I do not stand at the crossroads. I do not. Jareth is free. He is away. If the price for that is his indifference or hatred, so be it. I never wanted anything for myself. He will be beautiful and happy, forever and ever. And he will forget me. He'll have someone better than I could be for him. I want this decision to be the right one, though at ten minutes to the witching hour my trembling fingers fumble with the coat before putting it down again.

I will make this sacrifice for him.

* * *

Robert, Robert Williams is very good to me. He promises me that I will never go back to Radamanthus Asylum. He promises me he will protect me, always. There is some money from my husband's insurance, my legal husband. There is also money that Jared left for me. My husband under the law murdered the husband of my heart, and both are dead, and both are providing for me now. It is strange, the pitiful hatred the community rains down on me. They would prefer that I be penultimately guilty. I don't care. I sell the house with all the bad memories and buy a small cottage upstate. I wait for the baby. I wait for spring. I wonder if I'll ever see my friend again. I assume I will not.

When the baby comes, he is dark-skinned, and golden-eyed, a child of Mars. He is the child of rape. I am well enough to know that now, even though sometimes the bits and pieces of my memories play tricks on me. The one who planted him inside me was fair-skinned and brown-eyed. My friend was pale as the moon and had eyes full of mysteries. And my beloved Jared, dead, dead. This is a child with three fathers, perhaps someday four. This son looks like my first son, like Jared. There are tiny bumps on his forehead, just wide enough to touch with the spread V of two fingers. His ears are pointed. Something in him is fairy-touched, god-touched. But I am not afraid for him. I will never let him be afraid.

Months later, I am sent an invitation to a play. It is a handwritten invitation. I toss it aside and forget about it. I forget a lot of things, now, but I remember my friend. Sometimes I forget I have a baby. I remember when he cries. He almost never cries. I think about putting in a garden, in spring. But when I move to look out the window, I can see it is already summer. Time is passing me by, passing too quickly. I am becoming unanchored from reality, once more.

* * *

I see my friend one last time.

I remembered hearing the baby cry… no, not a baby. He is two years old now. Three? He walks, he sings, he talks. I remembered hearing him crying and thinking I needed to feed him. What do I have to feed him with? I will find something. His little horns are white as the flesh of his fairy godfather's wrists. I go in to him, and see his fairy godfather there, holding him close.

He looks the same. He looks just the same, but he is wearing a pendant over his breast that shines with a terrible brightness. "You're King now, aren't you?" I say. "You're the Goblin King."

"Robin," he says sternly. "You have done badly by your child, and made a liar out of me."

"No!" I deny it, but it is true. My son, my living son, has eyes only for my friend, who is no longer my friend.

"Oh yes," he says. The baby picks at the bones and jewels of his armored breastplate. Jareth has armored himself against me. "You abandoned me, and left me with no choice but to complete the rite with my enemy. I'm tempted to ask you why. Don't you know what you've done to me? You've ruined me."

"No," I said. "I tried to set you free."

"Free," he sneers. "And now I'm caught halfway between mortality and immortality, with the worst bits of both. You should have come to me. For the child's sake if not for yours or mine."

This is true. I am ashamed now, and crying. "What are you going to do?"

"Steal the baby," he says silkily. "Humanity. What a waste. I can't leave him to you. I'll give him to the people who can give him what you won't."

"His name is Jareth," I say. This is an apology and a protest.

"No," he says quietly. The baby pats his hand against his pendant and looks up at him with shining eyes. He smiles back at the baby, but has no smile for me. "He can earn his own name. He's never gotten anything useful from you."

"I gave him life. I want him back," I cry. "Please, give him back. Please."

"My Kingdom is there," he says, pointing with his free hand to the window. I can see the endless recurved and horrid expanse of the Labyrinth there, and I turn my eyes away. "Will you come to me there? Be my wife? Be a Queen? Be eternal?"

"No."

"No. I didn't think so. Shall I come here, be your husband, be Jared? Be a man, be mortal?"

"I already made that choice," I say, rubbing my sleeve over my eyes.

"So you did."

"Will I ever see you again?" I ask.

"It's not likely. Not in this lifetime. Goodbye, Robin." In a sandstorm of stinging glitter, he is gone.

He keeps his promises. He keeps every promise. He has stolen my child, and he is gone.

* * *

Time passes. More time passes. People talk to me, ask me questions. I don't hear them. They take me somewhere else. Somewhere quiet. Robert comes, and I remember Robert. There is something… I've forgotten to do. Something… I move in a fog. I am unhooked. I am unhinged. I am a door that time pours through. I decide to leave.

I write a note, for whoever will find it. Perhaps for Robert, whose wedding invitation I tossed away.

 **I will be right back.** Five words, enough for anyone who needs to know where I've gone.

I trace the curve of the scars on my left wrist. I trace them with the kitchen-knife. They look like leaves and ribbons all made of skin. I cut them apart. The tip of the knife is red. I tilt the blade and look in its face. I can see a face in the reflection. In an hour's time, I will be younger now than I am tonight. What face will I have? What will my name be, then? Will I be able to right these wrongs?

I can see her face. I can see the face of the girl I will be. I will go to Robert. I will be his little girl. I will be brave. I will do better. I will make Jareth listen. I will put everything right.

I wonder if my son will be there.

His name. His name will be…

* * *

"Finnvah," Sarah gasped, waking up, staring up into his golden eyes. Her body was frozen. She felt death nipping at her heart. But she had to tell him. "Finnvah! Please… Jareth! He's going to… he wants to…"

"I know, Sarah," Finnvah said, his face full of terrible compassion. "I've always known."

* * *

**END ACT II  
**

* * *

_**Next… Chapter 21: "Chekhov's Gun"** _


	21. Chekhov's Gun

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Soundtrack for Ch 21:
> 
> "Law (Earthlings on Fire)" –David Bowie  
> "Spark"—Fitz and the Tantrums  
> "I'd Rather Be High"—David Bowie

**Act III  
Chekhov's Gun**

* * *

 

_Betrayed_ , she thought, looking at Finnvah. "You traitor," she said, fighting to get the air in her lungs to hiss the word. "You… knew." If she'd had the energy, she would have raised her hand to slap his face. But her arm wasn't working. She was stiff and cold all over, all made over in ice.

He leaned over her, close enough for a kiss, and spoke very low.

"Believe me when I tell you you're very close to death, Sarah. And I'll let you die, right here and now, unless you answer one question correctly." His breath smelled of cloves. He seemed all eyes and teeth. "Do you want to keep your promise to _him_ , or break it?"

Everything seemed to be spinning. _If I die, I won't have to kill Jareth. Not in this lifetime._

_If I die, I won't be able to stop Finnvah from doing what I won't._

"He mustn't," she said. "Never."

"Never," said Finnvah. He moved away from her suddenly, and she had to close her eyes to keep the vertigo at bay. "That's a very long time, never." He rested one hand on her forehead and she felt the pressure of his other hand on her breastbone. "We'll have to talk more about your answer. You know what that means. Open your eyes," he commanded.

She knew what was coming and she squeezed her eyes tight in denial.

"Open your eyes, Sarah," he exhorted. "Or I'll pry them open."

"No," she moaned. The idea was more than she could stand. _Better to just die here, than take any help from a liar. Better to die than to help Jareth die._

"Think about how hard you'll be able to hit me once you're better," he said encouragingly. "Think about how much louder you'll be able to yell. And if you freeze to death here, you'll never be able to have the last word with _him_ , either. Open your eyes, Sarah. Now."

_Damn him_. He knew just what to say. She lifted her heavy eyelids and stared at him in anger until his face came into focus. Dark, golden-eyed. Those eyes became whirlpools of molten yellow, and she felt the pleasure he inevitably seemed to give when he used his Gift. The pleasure mixed with her anger in a restorative cocktail that burned out the coldness in her body, but left her exhausted.

"Rest now," he said, and added ominously, "There's nowhere you're in a hurry to go anyway, is there?" He laughed a low and bitter laugh. Sarah tried to sit up, but she was so heavy, and there seemed to be some sort of binding weight on her whole prone body. "Sleep," Finnvah said.

"Won't," Sarah croaked, mistrust shooting at him instead of her gun. "Enemy."

"Either we are or we aren't, Sarah. Enemies. But I don't kill people in their sleep." Finnvah's smile was cruel. " I'm in no rush," he said coldly. "We've only got the rest of our lives, to talk. The sooner you sleep, the sooner you wake up. Then you and I will figure out what's to be done."

"Yimmil?" she asked, at the end of her strength.

"Safe as houses," Finnvah replied. "If by houses you mean 'bag' and by safe you mean 'inside.' He's alive and kicking. Kicking quite a lot. That's something else we can negotiate when you wake up."

This much anger, in normal circumstances—and Sarah could not remember the last time she had been so helplessly and completely angry, not in her adult life—should have prevented sleep. Instead, it soaked through her, scouring her out, permeating her brain, and hung her out to dry in the first private dream she'd had in the Labyrinth, a dream in daylight.

* * *

_And she dreamed that she was flying over the Labyrinth, and the Labyrinth was a mandala drawn in sand. All the colors of the world were in it, all the shapes of meaning wound and recurved round about each other in an unending pattern. It was vast, vast. To the north of the compass-rose in this complex design she saw an ankh, the symbol of eternal life. It was a fixed point, a solid symbol. She went to the eye of the needle, the looped orifice of the ankh, and threw all her childhood toys and costumes into a fire that was burning there. The fire would rip a hole in the sky, carry the smoke of the offering into eternity. And Jareth was there, and it was also Finnvah, and she tried to yell at him, scream at him, but he retreated from her faster than she could make the accusations and protests come out of her mouth. Bits and pieces. Wreck and ruin. She dreamed she had her gun in her hand, and shot Jareth._

* * *

Sarah woke with a start and tried to sit up, but she couldn't. Her bag was a pillow for her head and shoulders, but she was all cocooned by the latticed cords of the hammock she'd conjured the other day. Her eyes landed on Finnvah, who was watching her.

"A little crude, don't you think?" Sarah said, wiggling, trying to work her wrists free.

"Crude, yes, but I couldn't think of anything more effective or less permanent. We need to have that conversation now."

"Set me free," Sarah commanded, eyeing him with distaste. "And we can talk about anything you like."

She wanted to take stock of her surroundings, but her instincts warned her not to look away from Finnvah, not even for even a moment. He unsheathed his short bronze sword and lowered it to her bound hands, but didn't slash through the cords. Instead, he waited, and let her saw herself free.

"He's said the same thing, to many people, many times, I'm sure," Finnvah offered, enigmatically. "Set me free."

"Cut the crap. Where's Yimmil?"

"With your friend, the dwarf," Finn said. "I'm sure everyone's looking forward to the happy reunion, but new business before old business, as John Company might say." He tilted his head to the side and regarded her curiously.

_A threat?_ Sarah wondered. _Hostages_. This situation set her teeth on edge. "You're in league with the King of Winter?" Sarah asked angrily, rubbing the blood back into her wrists and hands, and unpicking the knotted cords of the hammock that held her fast from thigh to ankle.

"I swore an oath to obey my King," Finnvah said. Sarah's hand reached carefully toward her hip. "Don't bother," he said. "I've put your idiot's weapon somewhere for safekeeping." Finnvah resheathed his sword and sat down a few yards from her, crosslegged on the yellow-brown flagstone pavings. "So you see, I'm no oathbreaker, no traitor. I obey my King. He's promised me the reward of this entire Kingdom if I serve him faithfully. What boon has your King offered you if you obey him?"

"Jareth isn't my King," Sarah hissed. "He asked me to help him. He _asked_."

"And you intend to keep that promise?"

"Only if he forces me to. Finnvah… Finnvarrah-Vercingetorix. How could you? Don't you know… you said he was kind to you. You said he was good to you. You love him. Why are you doing this? Why?" She felt her heart beat against her ribs with rage and grief. Yes, Finnvah had aggrieved her. She flexed her fingers, trying to make them work properly, so she could summon her gun. "I saw things, on the road," Sarah said accusingly. "I saw your mother. I saw what she didn't do. I saw Jareth give you to her, and steal you away from her." His eyes widened in shock and pain, and she knew she'd landed a hit. "He didn't do it to hurt her," Sarah insisted. "He did it to save you. She was sick. She couldn't take care of you. He gave you to people who loved you and raised you to be beautiful and proud and strong. Are you horrid enough to want revenge for that?"

"If you know that, you know her name," Finnvah said. "Give it to me, if you're telling me the truth."

"Your mother was Robin Zakar, Finnvah. And I'm Sarah."

"Yes," Finnvah said.

"Different lives, different people. But Jareth stays the same. Always the same."

"Yes," Finnvah said, the edge of a smile coming back to his mouth, that compassionate smile. "You're a puzzle-solver, Sarah. Solve this puzzle. Show me what it looks like."

"I need just one clue," Sarah said. She took a deep breath. "Just answer one question for me, truthfully and completely. Just one."

"Just one. And then I get to ask you one question, Sarah Williams, according to the same terms."

"Agreed. She reached out for his hand, and they gripped each others' wrists, favours meeting in gold and silver.

"If I were to try to leave here," Sarah asked, keeping her eyes fixed on his, "with the intention of going directly to Jareth and giving him the death he craves, would you try to stop me?"

"Yes," Finnvah said. His eyes glowed with glee. "I would. Any lengths. I would not scruple to murder you, if it meant keeping him alive for _one more mortal hour_." He squeezed her hand so hard it hurt, but it wasn't sadism. It was something else… "And now, my question for you," Finnvah countered. "If it cost the ruination of the Labyrinth, the end of your life, and the damnation of your soul to rescue Jareth from his immortal despair, would risk it all for just one slim chance of success?"

"Yes," Sarah said. "Oh, yes. All." The tears stood out in her eyes and she didn't bother to hide them.

"I have another question," Finnvah said, his voice choking, as if he too were near tears. "I think I know the answer now, Sarah. I wasn't sure before. But tell me. Are we enemies, or allies?"

"Oh, Finnvah," Sarah said, and now the tears did come. "Oh, allies. We are. I'm so glad." She pulled him to her, and her soul recalled another memory, of cradling his man's body while it was still a child. He body remembered how he had held her at the gates of the Goblin City when she'd cried the first tears she'd shed in five years on his shoulder. Only this time, he was the one to wipe his nose on her coat.

* * *

"You could have just told me," Sarah said, a few minutes later. Finn rummaged in an inner coat pocket and came up with a broad handkerchief embroidered with strawberries and used it to wipe his eyes, and hers, and, courteously, the shoulder of her jacket.

"I couldn't be sure," he said thickly. "I couldn't be sure I could trust you."

"You tricked me. You made me think you were one of John Company's agents. I might have shot you," Sarah said curtly. "Or nuked you. Idiot."

"Well, when we first met, I thought you knew what the King of the Labyrinth was asking you to do. 'Tasks and a door to open.' What was I supposed to think?"

Sarah had no apt reply to this. "Where are Yimmil and Hoggle?" she asked instead.

"I sent them both off on an errand," Finnvah said. "They're fine. I just needed to get them out of the way while I figured out what to do about you. They'll be back soon. In time for dinner, I think. Speaking of, you still need to solve the puzzle. I gave you the hint you asked for. I'll put together a meal and you sort it out, what's say?"

Finnvah stood and prized up one of the flagstones and removed several small packets and bundles from his coat. Very quickly, he had a tiny smokeless campfire going in the little hollow, and a tiny cookpot on a tiny trivet burbling with a stew made of grain and dried fruit, Sarah's next-to-last bottle of water, and a cut of bacon as thick as two thumbs.

Sarah took stock of their surroundings as he worked, letting her mind set the pieces in order.

They were in one of the odd little plazas of the Labyrinth. This precinct seemed to be made of warm yellow-brown stone, with the remnants of dead trailing plants climbing over the walls. So far away, looking like a miniature of itself, was the dome of the Castle. In the direction of the outer edge, far away and above, there was a deep red flaw in the sky, a scar, a wound. _Jareth_ , she thought. _Jareth is under that blot._  
  
"You've known the Goblin King for years," Sarah said. "Ever since your rite of passage. Sometime after that, you swore some sort of medieval oath of fealty to him. Four years ago? Finnvah, how old are you?"

"Impolite to ask a man his age," Finnvah said. "But as it happens, I'm thirty-seven. Or thirty-eight. Not quite clear on a birthday."

"Thirty-eight!" Sarah cackled. "Bullshit! No way! You look like a… I don't know, a hirsute twenty!"

"The matter of my age aside," Finnvah said snidely. "Go on."

Sarah composed her thoughts. "So you swore to obey him, and when he summoned you, or you managed to get here on a paying basis, and commanded you to come to him and do him in, you had to obey." Sarah mused on this a moment "If the stakes weren't so high, Finnvah, I'd be tempted to find Jareth just to slap him for tricking us into this."

"You'll probably have that option," Finnvah said. "But you never swore to be obedient to him. Get to the meat of the matter, Sarah. Tell me. Tell me why he wants his death."

She paced around the tiny plaza, thinking, and idly picked off some of the dead leaves from one of the overgrown topiaries. "I've talked to a lot of people on my journey. One of them, Ark, the ferryman. He said one of Jareth's names is Judex of the Cusp. Or Brother of the Mysteries. He wasn't the judge of your rite, but he must have the right to oversee… any rite of passage that gets made for magical people. Because…" Sarah thought. "Because he's one of the rare few of his kind who have undergone the process himself. Sound accurate?"

"Accurate," Finnvah said, stirring the stew.

Sarah looked up at the wound in the sky. _No, the wound in the dome. The crack. The unhealed fissure Underground. The Fisher-King. The Fissure King_.

"But something went wrong with his rite. Jareth made… a mistake. Or a failure. I don't know. He went through it to claim the Labyrinth for himself, but the Labyrinth is the space between. He's in the space between. Waiting. It must be painful for him, to be not mortal, not immortal."

"Why do you say painful?"

"Don't be silly. If it wasn't painful for him, he wouldn't be asking for an end. The Teind. This has something to do with the Teind. The stone giants said…" Sarah tried to recall the words exactly. _"The_ when _of the Teind is immaterial to him and to us, and is something that lies outside of your linear perception of existence. Before your birth or after your death, this thing has already come to pass. And there is little chance that you will, or have, or are able to understand how to purchase his life and cheat the fae of their rightful tithe._ That's what Rephaites said. He's looking to finish the rite of the Teind with his life. It's… the only way he can escape the dance. The dance in the Fairy Ring. He's still the dancer, caught up between his previous life and his death. He needs someone to pull him out. That's why you and I are here. He thinks… the only way back to his people is by ending his life. I'll bet any amount of money that the King Over the World has the power to keep him prisoner here, lonely and trapped, unless he agrees to his death. But the fae can't die. Not on their own. Death is a gift they need to be given." Sarah sighed deeply. "Does that fit?"

"Sounds about right."

"So what do we do?"

"Do?" Finnvah's left ear twitched and he turned his head. A moment later, Sarah heard Yimmil's squeaks and Hoggle's subdued tones, and their footsteps. "We four eat a nice meal and conspire together."

"Sarah!" Hoggle said uncertainly, as if she were about to scold him for some wrongdoing. "Why didn'tcha come to me for help if you needed it 'stead of asking longshanks here?" She ran to him and threw herself on her knees, hugging him. _Gentle, good, kind Hoggle. If only I had. I could have saved myself a lot of anguish. But I didn't want to. Because.._.

"I was ashamed," she managed to say.

"What's nice girl like you ever got to be ashamed of?" Hoggle asked, clearly baffled.

"I killed my mother," Sarah said. "She was very sick, and asked me to kill her. So I did. And I was ashamed of that. I still am."

"You still coulda called me, if you needed me," Hoggle reproached her, the hurt stark in his eyes. "I woulda come like a shot. We all woulda."

Sarah lowered her eyes, close to tears again. "I didn't deserve you. I didn't think I deserved your forgiveness. So I ran away and hid from all of you. I called on the Goblin King instead. I wanted to be punished. I didn't want anyone to forgive me. I knew he would be cruel. But he didn't come either, Hoggle. And now I'm here, and… he…" Sarah wrapped her arms around his neck and sobbed.

She heard Yimmil squeaking and plucking at her, alarmed at her hysterical distress, but she also heard Finn calling Yimmil away, letting her have her cry. After a few moments, the pleasing aroma of dinner drifted to her, piercing her sadness. Her stomach was growling and she was irritated that she could be something as mundane as hungry.

"I'm still your friend, Sarah," Hoggle said gravely. His big blue eyes held only compassion, no disgust.

"Eat this," Finnvah said, pushing bowls into their hands. "You need it. There's nothing that looks so bad that it isn't better on the other side of dinner." He turned and gave Yimmil his own bowl with a respectful nod, and took his own portion directly from the pot.

Finnvah crouched near the fire and clasped his hands between his knees as the others ate. "Yimmil's been a font of information, I can tell you. Everything up until the point when you were poisoned and left alone to freeze and follow some bad memory down the looking-glass road. He rescued you from certain death. Heroic to his bones." Yimmil looked uncertain at first, and then beamed at the praise. "He wrapped that hammock you brought around your body and dragged your dead weight for half a mile. He kept you alive and he got you out. He's the best goblin in the world, and more loyal by far to his Queen than I am to my King." Finn actually bowed his neck at Yimmil, who took it as his due.

"Which isn't saying much," Sarah said, "Considering I'm no Queen. So how long were you following me, Finnvah? After the dance in the Fairy Ring?"

"I met up with Hoggle in the Bog of Eternal Stench," Finnvah admitted. "After I got you out, we started following your trail."

"You," she said with a withering, teasing smile, "are a dick, Finnvarrah-Vercingetorix."

"Please," Finnvah said sarcastically. "I was afraid you were trying to do what I've been trying to avoid doing," he said. "I've been here for seven years, Sarah. Seven years, having the Goblin King shout in my ear every goddamned night about fulfilling my promise and demonstrating my loyalty and pretending I couldn't hear him." He pulled a miniscule teapot out of his magic coat and set it to boil on the fire. "Seven years of acting the night watchman over the Goblin City, trying to avoid obeying one command by over-performing at another. And then you come and break up my holding pattern and send me out in the Labyrinth. You've managed to do in seven days what I've tried to avoid doing for seven years. I was trying to figure out a way to slow your roll. How on Earth or Under does that make me the dick in this situation, oh Queen Bitch?"

Hoggle hemmed nervously over this exchange of friendly profanities.

"No, it's fine. The Goblin King is looking to die, we've been working against each other from the beginning, but never mind the fact that he's asking me to murder him—" Sarah stuffed a mouthful of stew into her face, realizing just how precarious her emotional footing still was.

"It ain't no murder," Hoggle said gruffly.

The dwarf suddenly had everyone's attention.

"He's bad," Hoggle said defensively. "Jareth's bad and rotten to the core. He just sat his skinny royal duff on his throne and never cared about anything anywhere except when he wasn't being spoiled rotten with attention. Jareth wants to die and I say good. Th' fact that he's brought Sarah here to force her to do for him just proves my point." Hoggle stood and paced around the fire like a miniature bull, tossing his head and snorting. "Why don'tcha want to do it, though, Sarah? That's the part I can't figure. He's hurt you the most of anyone here."

"Wait," said Finnvah. The kettle was whistling; he moved it out of the heat. "The King of the Labyrinth didn't bring Sarah. He wasn't expecting her."

"The goblins brought me," Sarah suggested.

"Yes-Ma'am-Lady came. We no bring. Door was open, so we went to fetch you."

"So who opened the door?" Sarah asked Yimmil.

The little goblin shrugged. "Don't know. We heard you. We saw you. We came. We can't open doors."

"The Faerie King," Hoggle said with quiet certainty. "John Company. Maybe it was him."

"You know the King of Winter?" Finnvah asked. "The King over the World?"

"He's not as bad as Jareth," Hoggle defended himself weakly. "He was trying to help Jareth, he said. An' help the rest of us, too. He said to me, he said, 'Hoggle,' using my right and proper name and never making fun of me, 'Hoggle,' he says, 'The Goblin King is getting tired and frayed around the edges and would prolly like to lay it all down.' Empathetic-like. An' he never put on grand airs, or jiggled his wedding tackle in my face. He says to me, 'Tell young Jare'th I'm giving him a buyout option.' He said, 'Just so he knows the Labyrinth won't be left to rot when he goes, I can come take over in the interim.' Like between times until we got a new ruler, that's what that meant. He said 'All he has to do to die is get someone mortal to bring it to him. Someone who'll love him enough to let him go.' Death for Jareth's kind ain't like death for you or me or even that wee goblin there. It's a kind of freedom. Leastaways, that's what the King of Winter said."

"And that's what you told the King of the Labyrinth," Finnvah said, looking so bleakly angry that Hoggle shivered and took a step back. "You didn't like your King so you plotted his death? You coward."

"I just passed along the information," Hoggle said, crossing his arms over his chest. "I ain't never pretended to be nothing but what I am." He tried to stare down the taller man. "I told you I was a coward when you dragged me along on this dead-end quest of yours. I wouldn't even ha' gone if you hadn't said Sarah needed me." He looked over at Sarah and lost some of his bravado. "I ain't gonna say I did wrong unless Sarah says I did."

_Oh, shit_ , Sarah thought. _Oh, what a mess this is_. "You did what you thought was right," Sarah said carefully. "But Hoggle, I need your help now, and your King does, too. I need to find a way to go back on my promise. I need to find a way to save him. Will you help me, please?"

"Help? Help you put His Nibs back on his throne where he can stomp his boot in every face that comes in strikin' distance? Why can't you just send him on his way?"

"Because I love him," Sarah said.

"You? Love him! I've seen the way he plays at love! You're all crazy, that's what you are!" Hoggle threw his hands in the air and headed toward a gap in the plaza.

"And where are you going?" Finnvah shouted after him. "You're going to miss your tea!"

"I need ta think! I'll be back later!" Grousing and threatening words filled the air above Hoggle's head like a dark cloud.

"Well then," Finnvah said, when Hoggle was quite gone. "There's another piece fallen into place." He cast a black look at Hoggle's back.

"Oh, don't," Sarah said. "Don't think too badly of him, Finnvah. Jareth's never been exactly nice to him, you know. In fact, he's been downright cruel. I think he's spent a lot of idle hours getting his jollies tormenting him, actually."

Finnvah scowled, and then gave a slight nod of his head. "I'll bow to your superior experience in the matter." Then his tone became gently serious. "So. You really do love him, then?"

"Enough to not pretend he pees rosewater," Sarah said. "We still need to make a plan, Finnvah. What do we do?"

"Save his life," Finnvah said. "Is it possible he loves you back? Enough to release you from your promise?"

"I don't know," Sarah replied. "I told Jareth I loved him. He said some nasty things in response. But then…"

"Then what?" Finnvah poured out a miniscule splash of tea into a bone cup and gave it to her. The taste of it was hot and spicy on the tongue.

Sarah looked over at Yimmil, who had taken apart the contents of her bag and was sorting through the lot.

"Then… " Sarah blushed. "He… we… you know. We…"

Finnvah rolled his eyes. "This isn't a game of kiss-and-tell, Sarah. You need to think of me as your doctor, and his. Anything you can give me for a prognosis would be helpful." Sarah had flinched at the word 'doctor,' and her cheeks burned as bright as the coals. "So. You've made love to him. I suppose you asked him for that, too. Did it get the lust out of your system, or just make you hungry for more?"

"Skating perilously close to dick territory again, Finn," Sarah snapped, but she took a sip of her tea. It was invigorating. "No, I didn't ask him. He… initiated. He said it was… a gift. That I'd tamed him."

"That's good, Finnvah said. "That's a very good sign." He gave her a glance that Sarah only remembered seeing on a teacher who had been particularly pleased with her book report, and she blushed harder. "When the Gentry set their hearts on something, it's almost impossible to sway them. The King has wanted to die for years. But now, there's a chance, there's a very good chance, that you've interested him in something else."

"What?" Sarah asked.

"I think he loves you, Sarah. Or he could. And if you can make him admit to that, you have a chance at saving him."

"How?" she asked in frustration. "How? Saying 'I love you' to him is like asking to be slapped. He doesn't listen to me, Finnvah. He just doesn't."

"Try to see things from his perspective. No, try," he insisted when Sarah pulled a face. "He's a man without a childhood. All of his experiences leading up to his Kingship are the experiences of a god. Don't mistake the Gentry for Elves or any other classification of mortal magical being. We're talking aeons of experience, powers as formidable as an angel's or a god's. And then all of that gets somehow squeezed into a mortal but ageless body that he can't take off. If your positions were reversed, you'd be frightened and upset and a little sick at heart and looking for a way out. Show him empathy. Show him kindness. And if that doesn't work, yell at him. Wake him up, shake him up. Get his attention. Show him every beautiful thing that flesh can be. Delight him. Seduce him. Beguile him. Take him up and take him down. Change his mind."

"Why is it always me?" she asked, knowing she was whining again, but feeling entitled. "It's always me. Why couldn't it have been someone else?"

"Because you love him, Sarah. I love him too. Even the little goblin loves him. But you're going to have to be our champion. It's all up to you, now. It's you or no-one." He looked down at her. "I have faith in you, Sarah. The whole Labyrinth has faith in you. You can do this. Because we need you, and because you have to." Finnvah curled a finger round and round his goatish beard.

"I told him I loved him, before. He was incredibly cold to me after that. Until… well. That happened."

"I'd like you to know how much I respect you, Sarah," Finn said, finally taking a sip of his tea.

"I sense a 'but' coming," Sarah said. She scowled at him.

"No buts. You've kept yourself intact in the face of a very formidable member of the Gentry. You've only made him one vow, and while it's the worst one you could have made, you didn't know you were doing it. You've got a lot more wiggle room in your promise than I do. And I've followed in your footsteps. I've seen everything you've done here in the Kingdom. You're fearless, always with the right instincts, making choice after choice that takes you closer to your goal. Only you understand now that the stakes of the game are higher than you'd first thought."

"It was that way the first time, too," Sarah admitted. "It wasn't just about getting Toby back. It was about not… I don't know, losing my soul. So maybe the stakes are the same this time, too. Only the King is also my lover now, holding himself hostage. I'm frightened, Finnvah. I'm really scared. I don't know how to… I don't know what to do."

"I think… the reason he summoned me, and not you is because I'm less of a risk," Finn said solemnly, holding her hand. "Or you're the risk that matters, the one that frightens him. You could give him a choice that he's afraid to take."

"But isn't that selfish of me?" Sarah demanded. "I don't want to give him the one thing he really seems to want. I can't be Robin for him. I can't be anyone but my own self. Isn't that selfish? Isn't that the antithesis of Love?"

"I think you'll need ever resource you've got to win at his game," Finnvah said. "Even your selfishness. Even your aggravating bitchery." Carefully, he leaned forward and kissed her brow. He kept his face close, and spoke to her softly, as if afraid of being overheard. "It's going to be you, and not me, Sarah. I'm obedient. A known quantity, bought and paid for. You're the risk he might be tempted to take. Do you understand what you'll have to do?"

"I understand, but I don't know. I can't see it," she said, just as quietly. "Please. Be my teacher. Tell me what I need to do."

Finnvah took both of her hands in his. As he spoke, his eyes glowed golden in his dark face. "This is still the dance in the Fairy Ring," he said. "And he's the dancer who's trapped. An end to the life he has now is one way to pull him out. He thinks death is the only route away from a lonely and self-destructive immortality. But you've got to show him that the road leads out in two directions. It's the story of Janet and Tam-Lin all over again."

"That's the third time someone has brought up that story to me," Sarah said, letting go and finishing her tea. Finnvah promptly refilled her cup. "And Jareth was furious when I mentioned it to him. He said it was just one of Winter's lies. I know it, vaguely, but apparently the things I think I know are what've gotten me into trouble from the beginning. So why don't you tell me the story, Finnvah?"

Finn thought for a moment. "It's not a lie. It's a story, and a fairly new one. Maybe three, four hundred years old? Tam-Lin was supposed to be a knight in service to the Faerie Queen. She stole him from the mortal world and kept him, ageless, in her court for a century. And one day this high-stepping young woman, Janet, came to the crossroads where he lurked. It's vague, in the ballad, whether he raped her or they made love. But Janet went back home, and everybody figured out in a few months that she was pregnant. So she went back to the crossroads, intending to make Tam-Lin face up to his responsibilities."

"It's like Maury Povich," Sarah said, pursing her lips. "You are the baby-daddy, Tam-Lin."

"The world changes and changes, and nothing changes," Finnvah said in agreement. "So Tam-Lin says to Janet, 'Why are you here digging up abortifacient herbs, Janet? Do you want to kill my baby?' Or the equivalent. He was apparently pleased with his paternity. It proved something, or made something possible for him. And he told her, if she wanted him around to raise their child, she needed to come back to the crossroads again at midnight on Halloween." Finnvah thought for a moment. "The Gentry were going to use Tam-Lin to pay the Teind, the tax to Hell. And since he was so beautiful, he knew what was coming. So Janet had to come and claim him. She was the only other person in the world who could make a claim on him. He told her how to win him away from them…I think I have this part memorized," he said.

**'They'll turn me in thy arms, lady,**   
**An adder and a snake;**   
**But hold me fast, don't let me go,**   
**To be your worldly mate.**

**'They'll turn me in your arms, lady,**   
**A lion, spare and stern;**   
**But hold me fast, don't let me go,**   
**The father of your bairn.**

**'They'll turn me in your arms, lady,**   
**A red hot rod of iron;**   
**Then hold me fast, don't be afraid,**   
**I'll do to you no harm.**

**'They'll turn me in your arms, lady,**   
**A mother-naked man;**   
**Cast your green kirtle over me,**   
**To keep me from the rain.**

"In other words," Finnvah said, "Janet had to face fear and pain and the danger of death to win Tam-Lin over to mortality." He looked at her solemnly and took her hands again. "You'll have to do the same thing. You are to go to him, and love him. Take him in. Bring him into you by whatever means. And if there's any way to manage it, you should be pregnant with his child when you make the attempt."

"He said that was impossible," Sarah protested.

"We're here, in this place, and you say impossible? He's gifted you his favour and given you his body and showed you his Kingdom and you say impossible? I say possible. No, be quiet," he said, as she readied another protest. "He's not fully fae and not fully human. It's possible. He may think it's impossible, he may have been told it's impossible, but even the King of the Labyrinth is entitled to be wrong once in a while."

"I wont!" Sarah shouted at him. Her temper was a wild animal looking to claw his face. "I won't! I won't be like my mother! It's not fair!"

"Not fair?" He shook her by the shoulders so her teeth clicked. "Don't talk to me about fair! I'd do anything for him, but I can't do that because I'm a boy! And you can, and you say you won't because it's not _fair_?" Finnvah's tirade was briefly interrupted by Yimmil, who pounced on Finnvah with an angry screech, cussing and scratching.

"You be nice to Yes-Ma'am-Lady!" Yimmil yelled. It took some doing for Sarah to calm him down, but eventually he did, watching over the two of them carefully when Finnvah resumed talking. Sarah was glad Yimmil had intervened. She had been tempted to do the same thing to him herself.

"Either you love him or you don't, Sarah," Finnvah said, nursing a cut over his eyebrow. "Either you're willing to risk everything, or nothing. There's too much in-between here already. It's time to break open this ring and pull the prisoners out. There are rules to these things, and one of the rules of this type of redemption game is a pregnant lover."

"That's barbaric and patriarchal," Sarah said angrily.

"I don't deny it. Maybe things will be different for your children." He patted her shoulder, even though it made Yimmil hiss at him. "All I know is that he's bound by the old rules. A pregnant lover may not even be necessary, but it seems to follow the pattern he's set in. You've got to stack the odds in your favor. That is, if you're serious about redeeming him. Are you?"

"You know I am," Sarah said bitterly. "But this is a lot to ask. Whoever made the rules has a lot to answer for."

He opened his arms for her. She leaned into him and he held her. She felt like weeping but was dry of tears. Yimmil sidled close, suspicious of Finn, but calmed when she patted him.

* * *

As afternoon wore on to evening, waiting for Hoggle, they occupied themselves together in the plaza. Finnvah was a jack-of-all-day-trades, it seemed, and had ideas about pruning the vegetation. Some of the shapeless topiaries, under his shortsword, began to take on some vitality. One or two put out stained-glass flowers moments after he'd finished. Sarah and Yimmil worked with him, or under him, trying to keep busy. Sarah, in particular, wanted something to occupy her mind and her hands.

An hour before twilight, Finnvah discovered that one of the circular lips of stone in the plaza was meant to be a fountain. He fiddled with it a while, occasionally borrowing one of Sarah's smaller camera-oriented tools. When Finnvah pronounced the fountain repaired, they waited for something to happen. It was Sarah, borrowing Finnvah's lighter, who discovered (almost at cost of her eyebrows) that this fountain was meant to spume fire, not water. The fountain cascaded upward in silver and gold and pearlescent sparks, reflecting off the new flowers and the waiting walls. All three of them made quiet noises of awe. It was the prettiest thing Sarah had seen in the Labyrinth yet, and the most ephemeral. After a few moments, the fire-fountain guttered and died out. The walls were stone, and the flowers were dull in the dimming light.

It was then that Hoggle came back. He looked very solemn as he approached Sarah.

"I forgive you," Hoggle said quietly. "I think it's the wrong thing, still. But Sarah, I'll help you if it's what you want."

Sarah bent down on one knee and kissed Hoggle's hand. "Yes. Thank you, Hoggle. Thank you."

"So what does help from you entail, dwarf?" Finnvah asked.

"As it so happens," Hoggle said, puffed with pride, "I know a shortcut, out of the whole Labyrinth from here."

* * *

**_Next… Chapter 22: "The Borderland Wall"_   
**

* * *

_You thought Finnvah was going to be an unexpected villain, but he's always the unexpected hero. Bless him._

_Quoted herein is version 39A of the Child Ballads: "Tam Lin."_


	22. The Borderland Wall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Soundtrack for Chapter 22:
> 
> "Summer Overture—Clint Mansell  
> "Were the World Mine"—Were the World Mine soundtrack  
> "Kiss from a Rose"—Seal
> 
> Author's Note: the very end of this chapter contains sexual situations. Reader discretion is advised.

**The Borderland Wall**

* * *

 

Sarah Williams walked to her rendezvous with destiny, and she walked alone.

Hoggle had led the four of them through the byways of the outer Labyrinth with ease, choosing his path with intuitive skill. He opened doors for them, when doors were visible, and when they weren't, waiting for the others to pass through before coming behind them. With every set of doors, Sarah, looked upward, to the scar in the sky, attempting to reorient herself, but the red mark in the darkness remained steadfast as Polaris.

Finally Hoggle halted in front of a pair of obsidian gates set in a lintel of horn and bone.

"These doors are as close as I can get to where you need to go," said Hoggle, putting his hands on his hips. There," he said calmly, looking at the closed passage. "You gets out there." The gates opened wide as Hoggle gestured toward them, revealing a parched wasteland of black sand and brown loess under a moonless sky. Sarah darted a glance upward at the wound in the ceiling of the world. It glowed where the moon would have, glowed red as newly bruised flesh, casting an eerie light on the dry world outside.

Sarah took a deep breath. "Okay," she said, finally. She got down on one knee and patted the edge of her bag. "Hop on, Yimmil."

"Can't, Yes-Ma'am-Lady," he said. He twisted his hands together and stared out at the sand nervously. "Not going."

"Hush now, don't be afraid," Sarah said. She tried to coax him with an open hand, but he wouldn't budge. "You go everywhere I go, remember? I'm not leaving you behind."

"Can't leave," Yimmil said. "Not allowed. Desert for-bee-din. For-bee-din for goblins."

"Well, I'm in charge and I say you can go," Sarah said, feeling just a little put out and something else she didn't want to name as the beginning of desperation. "Can't you, Yimmil?"

Yimmil shook his head. He ran to Finnvah, Finnvah of all people, and Finnvah scooped him up neat as a trick and set the littlest goblin on his shoulder. Yimmil buried his face in Finn's collar, and Sarah was upset and slightly jealous when Finnvah patted the goblin, and Yimmil allowed it.

"Why can't he go?" Sarah asked Finnvah and Hoggle unhappily.

"Goblins can't enter the desert," Finnvah said. "It's one of _his_ old rules, a way to keep them from getting into mischief or causing trouble. He'd disintegrate. He can't go." Yimmil turned to look at her, and the three of them regarded her solemnly.

"I don't want to go alone," Sarah said, clenching her fists. "You're really going to make me face him alone?"

"You have to, Sarah," Hoggle said, looking embarrassed. "You 'member. That's the way it's done." He refused to look her in the eyes. "Here," he said, gruffly, digging a small object out of his bag of jewels and handing it to her.

Sarah stared at the object in her palm. It was a ring, her mother's ring, the filigree gold ring with a dark red garnet cut in the shape of a heart. " _It's for strength of heart,"_ he mother had said, laughing when she gave the ring to Sarah. _"But it's too big for me."_ The ring, too large for her mother's slim fingers, had fit Sarah's fourteen-year-old middle finger precisely. Now it fit on her right ring finger, snug as a bug.

"Hoggle," said Sarah. "Where did you get this?"

Hoggle stuck his hands in his pockets and still wouldn't quite meet her eyes.

"Bargained for it," Hoggle said gruffly. He skittered a look at her. "Took a while. Planned on giving it back to you. Guess now maybe you'll want to give it to _him_ , when you see him." Sarah bent down and kissed his temple. She had nothing to say to this. Hoggle called himself a coward, but when he was brave, he was the bravest person she knew.

"I wish I had something to give you," Finnvah said. "The best we could manage was to take your gun and throw it in the river."

"So that's what Hoggle and Yimmil were doing," Sarah said. "I'd wondered. You know I can get it back, don't you?"

"It'd be better if you didn't," Finnvah said. He came close to Sarah and hugged her, and Yimmil joined in too, making a goblin sandwich. "Darkness is wasting," Finnvah said. "You'll have to go now. I don't have anything to give you but words. But if it helps at all to know, Sarah, I love you a little bit more than I love him." He stepped back and offered Yimmil to her, holding him under his arms. "Say goodbye to Yes-Ma'am-Lady, Yimmil."

Yimmil gave Finnvah a dirty look, but then reached out for Sarah. She cuddled him to her, and suddenly Sarah knew just what to do. She hummed the note that the King had left, the one in the minor key of pain, sharp. "The King made me promise," Sarah said to Yimmil, stroking his fur. "But I made you a promise first. Do you remember what I promised, Yimmil?"

"Yes-Ma'am Lady promised to try to find King, and bring him back."

"That's the promise I intend to keep," Sarah said. "You stay with No-Sir-Lord now." She handed the goblin back and looked at the three of them. "I don't know how long this will take, but if I'm not back by twilight on the fourth night, it probably means I've lost."

"We'll tell the story," Finnvah said. "If Hoggle will help, we'll spread news of you to the four corners of the Labyrinth. The ones you've met already know. We'll tell them to expect a young Queen."

"Or an old King," Sarah said. Really, she was procrastinating now. "It's better if they hope for their King." She adjusted the weight of her pack. "I'm going now," she said. "Close the doors after me, please, Hoggle."

She stepped through the gateway with feigned eagerness and determination. The desert wind hit her face like a slap. And, not being able to help herself, she turned to watch them, smiling at them, until the gates swung shut between them.

Now she was truly alone.

She put her hand up and felt for the key between her breasts. If it had any magical virtue left to it, it would serve to lock a door. After she had last used it, Sarah had despaired, thinking that the key was needed to unlock Jareth's shackles, or some other prison door. But now she wondered if it wasn't meant to lock the door Jareth was intent on entering. In any case, Jareth's door had never been a literal door. That had been part of his trickery, something she didn't quite want to call a lie—because she hadn't wanted to see the truth.

She turned her face out of the sandpaper wind and looked at the closed gates of the Labyrinth. She could lock it now, lock it tight behind her. She could lock down the Labyrinth itself, she intuited, feeling that the symbolic act of locking one door would translate into locking every door. And then her key would serve to open a door as magnificently great.

She took up the key. The lock on this door was huge, but her key would work. The sand blew gritty in her eyes. Her hand trembled as she raised the key to the lock.

A voice sounded in her ear, carried on the wind, a voice like a golden trumpet.

_"And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven."_

_This is a test_ , she thought, going cold. What she bound or loosed here in this moment would be bound and loosed on Earth. And this key had only ever been used to lock in prisoners, or set them free.

 _I don't have the right_ , she thought. _The doors to the Labyrinth are unlocked because Jareth wanted it that way. I'll give the key back to him._ _He's the only one who has the right to use it on these doors_.

She knelt down in the sand and let the wind rip at her bowed face.

 _God_ , she thought. _I haven't spoken to you in a long time, but this is my prayer. Help me, God. Help me know how to do what's right. Show Jareth some compassion. Help him. Thank you for him, and thank you for the Labyrinth. Amen._

There was no answer, no revelation, no mysterious or applicable Bible verses sounding on the wind. So Sarah turned her face into the inimical wind, using the wound in the sky as her lodestone, and she walked.

* * *

The wall she kept to her left hand, and the desert to her right. She made a circle of her finger and thumb and measured how the wound in the sky fit inside. In the first few hours, she despaired of it ever getting bigger, of her ever getting closer. But later it seemed the wound fit inside the circle, and hours later encompassed it entire, the edges of the mark red around the flesh of her hand. There was nothing but the very outmost edge of the Labyrinth. Unwillingly, she began to wonder what would happen when she found Jareth.

What would he say to her when she found him? Would he rebuke her for taking so long? Would he make delirious love to her? Would he hand her a knife and command her to slit his throat right then and there?

The wall at her left, the borderland wall, was a refuge for plants, thorn and thistle. The desert at her right showed nothing but barrenness, with the bones of metamorphic stone poking through in strange wind-scoured sculptures. Her feet hurt dreadfully when she tried to run, and the sucking dirt and sand dunes tried to pull off her shoes.

 _No_ , she decided. He would be glad to see her. And if there were any drop of blood in his heart, he would show a little shame, knowing how she felt about him. He knew she loved him. Joy coursed through her _. I can do this. This can be done. I will not be afraid._

Sometime in the fifth hour of the night, she saw the edge of the wall make a sharp turn to the right. Sarah felt encouraged. _That. That is where I need to go._ She considered making a beeline, jaywalking across the wasteland, but decided not to. Shortcuts, thus far, had only done her harm. She raised her hand to measure the red blot, which was now so large that it outlined her fist with pulsing fire. She thought about stopping to eat something, drink something, but didn't.

Dawn was breaking at the horizon when she approached the juncture in the borderland wall. Golden light pulsed at the rim of the horizon, a sunrise without a sun. The red mark in the sky became a filter for darkness instead of light, giving off strange shadows and eating up the brightness of the day around it. The wind slowed and then stopped.

 _I am not afraid. Your ear will catch my voice, my eye will catch your eye_.

Tangled brambles cloaked the place where the border bent, though the material of the wall was different where it began to move straight into the desert. Before, it had been made of dressed stone, with curved ribs and buttresses angling out like knives. Now it was brick, which the growing light revealed to be as golden-brown as the sandy earth, oddly crude, unreflective bricks whose pattern reminded her of the Labyrinth she had visited at the tender age of fourteen, heavy thick walls that seemed to go on and on in only two directions.

 _"It's full of openings,"_ Sarah thought, remembering the sweet little worm with his wee muffler and invitations to come inside for tea with 'the missus.' _"It's full of openings, only you ain't seein' 'em."_ Sarah trailed her hand across the brick wall as she walked, but the thorns tore at her and hurt her, and she couldn't keep it up for long. She sighed.

There were long rectangular trenches in the earth, filled in with drifting earth and sand in colors darker than the rest of the desert. She walked between these and the wall, wondering about them. Once or twice she stumbled over a cracked brick.

Here and there the brambles on the wall had clusters of pale white-green blossoms like hedge roses, blossoms that opened to the light. There were fairies here, too, clouds and clusters of them flitting from blossom to blossom. They sucked the morning dew and the nectar of the flowers and hummed and chattered amongst each other. Periodically, the brick wall sprouted rounded knobbly columns that looked like old-fashioned beehives, with little round openings just fairy-sized. The fluttering fairies came in and out of these clay habitations, safe and unharmed. A few flew over to Sarah now and then, and she treated them like bees—ducking instead of swatting. They might be tiny, but she remembered how hard they could bite.

 _Jareth built this wall_ , she suddenly realized. She reached out to touch it again in a place between the fairy skep-houses. _It's solid, and old. It's been the work of years. Years. Long enough for the plants to find a purchase and grow high_.

She kept walking. _Where does it end?_ Sarah wondered in frustration. _Does it just go on and on? Jareth, where are you?_

The wound in the sky gave off a red and silent scream. The life of the plants in this strange brick wall faded to barrenness. There, in the wasteland, finally, the wall came to an end. It was the end of the Labyrinth. And there Jareth was, in the last place she'd looked, large as life and twice as natural.

"Hullo, Sarah," said Jareth, as if they'd only broken off a friendly conversation for a few moments. He sat at the top of the wall, one leg thrown over it. He was looking not at her but at the brick he'd just mortared in place. He was shirtless, hair tied back in a rag, with splotches of mud and brick-dust over his chest and arms. His amulet was tied high against his throat like an executioner's noose. Of all the scenarios that had run through her head about meeting him again, catching him at manual labor had never been one of them.

"Hello, Jareth. Nice wall." She decided to let him set the tone, and kept her words low and casual. Sarah looked and stared. _Has he… done all this by hand? Not by magic, but by his own effort?_

"Oh this? Yes, it's shaping up quite well." Jareth said, flipping the trowel in the air and catching it. "Just you, then? No young Finnvarrah-Vercingetorix?"

"It's just me," Sarah said. Her heart gave a little sideways lurch. _Aren't I enough? Isn't he glad to see me at all?_ "You look like hell," she said. She didn't know what else to say.

"So do you," he said, jamming his trowel onto a palette of thick mud and vaulting over the edge of the wall to stand over her. "And you smell like a petting zoo," he said lovingly. He slowly lifted his strong hands and took her by the meat of her upper arms, clutching at her, then caressing her arms through the leather of his gloves and the leather of her jacket. He turned his head this way and that, looking at her face from every angle. She could feel how he trembled, could see the pulse of his heartbeat throbbing against his amulet. Or perhaps she was trembling.

"Jareth," she said. Above them, the red wound in the sky wavered with rays of darkness. She felt dizzy.

"You're here," he said with wonder. "Tell me I'm not dreaming this." He cupped her face in his hands and stared at her. "You're here, Sarah. You've come for me?" His rough leather fingertips dug into the holes of her ears, and his thumbs pressed painfully against her cheekbones. "You've come for me?"

"I made a promise," she said. "Don't hurt me," she begged with a stuttering plea.

He kissed her, and the taste of him was like ambrosia. But it was a gentle kiss, for all that.

"Jareth," she murmured against his mouth. "I know now what you want. Please… please don't make me do it. Don't make me do it."

He kissed her again, his tongue like the quick dart of a knife. Then he let go of her mouth, but held her close to him. "Let's not talk about that today, Sarah. Not while you're so tired and weak. I want you at your best." He patted her in a friendly way. "Let me enjoy the pleasure of your company for just a while before we begin the endgame in earnest." His arms were strong, and muscled, but not tanned for all his lack of covering. "You've come a long way tonight. Let me show you to the amenities. And we'll share a meal. Depending on your mood, I may be having one of two things for dessert."

"What?" she asked stupidly.

"Your favour, or you. Depending on your mood."

"Maybe both?" she offered irascibly, and he laughed, a deep laugh full of mischief.

He slipped her bag over his shoulders and took her arm. She leaned heavily against him, glad of his solidity and his strength. And he, he seemed glad of her weight, too, as if it were something that kept him from drifting into the air.

* * *

He showed her everything. The wall opened up one long branched arm into a four-cornered crossroads, the wall about two feet thick, the wall Jareth had been working on building when she'd found him. Through the passage, she could see some sort of amphitheater or vestibule, half-curved and open, a ring in the center of the crossroads. The other arm of the passage showed a narrow wedge of desert and the edge of what Sarah hoped was green plant life, a prosaic oasis. "The easements," he said, pointing over to a tiny modern-looking brick building to her right.

Sarah wasn't ashamed to hobble over to them as quickly as her pressing need would allow, and flipped him the bird when he laughed at her. It was a double restroom, with swinging doors labeled with the universal signs for "male" and "female," and having, oh joy of joys and wonder of wonders, a flushing toilet and a sink. After washing her hands, she gulped down handfuls of water from the lukewarm taps, and had a momentary sense of deja-vu. This little public restroom might have been lifted wholesale out of some national park or highway rest stop.

She shoved the door back open and was relieved to see Jareth waiting there for her, at a respectful distance.

"It's real," he said, confirming her unvoiced doubts. "I just borrowed it for a bit."

"Lately?" Sarah asked, taking back her bag from him.

"Oh, no. Years ago." Instead of taking her directly through the brick passage he'd built, he took her around the long way. After the outflung arm of the crossroads branch, they walked beside the rounded curve of the terminus of the passage. Sarah recalled her dream of the ankh. It was real; Jareth had built it. She stared at the brickwork with dislike.

"It's not a wall," she murmured. "What is it then?"

"A tomb?"

"Don't play. Is it… it's a doorway. A way in, isn't it? Or a way out."

"Very good." He looked impressed. "Yes. It is that."

On the far side of the wall, between the curve and the other arm of the crossroads, there was a broad pavilion, a tent all in red, with heavy outer drapes of thick rusty felt and inner gauze curtains of crimson. The flaps were closed, but Sarah gave it a curious glance before Jareth seated her on a low wooden bench nearby. "What would the lady have?" he asked. "Coffee, tea, dragon's milk? The heart of darkness, the color of a lotus? Anything you like, Sarah."

She stared at him. "A fried bologna sandwich with mustard," she said, thinking of little-girl snacks and dinners, thinking of the most unlikely and comforting things to be eaten here. "And… a vanilla milkshake. No. Strawberry."

He disappeared into the tent and Sarah stared stupidly out at the campsite. The oasis was about ten yards away, complete with prosaic palm trees and ferns, thick and deep as mystery. And further back from the pavilion, near the wall, were flats and trays of sun-baking brick, a chickenwire cage full of straw, and one of those long trenches she'd seen before by the wall. It was obvious now what they were—a clay pit, a brickworks. _Not only did he set every brick in this wall_ , she thought, rather exhausted by the thought, _but he also shaped every brick_. _The work of years_.

"Here," Jareth said. He held up a white-bread sandwich in one hand and a paper cup in the other and presented them to her, obviously pleased with himself.

"Aren't you hungry?" Sarah asked.

"I am. What are you going to feed me?" he asked.

"Well, what would you like?" she countered, taking a small bite and enjoying it immensely. The bologna was crisp and fatty, the mustard hot and prickly, and the nasty white bread sweet and fluffy. He sat down by her leg and rested his head against her thigh.

"I don't know," he said, sounding a little lost. "Food has never been especially appealing."

"Try this, then," she said, handing him the strawberry milkshake—not without regret, because although she half-wanted to live inside the perfect sandwich she was currently eating, the milkshake had obvious bits of real strawberries in it, her favorite. "Go on," she said. "Sometimes you'll be drinking it and you'll find a little chewy piece of fruit in there. It's wonderful."

"You're not going to feed me your favour, then?" he asked, wrinkling his nose as he sniffed the concoction, and then tasting the contents carefully with the tip of his tongue. "Mmm," his voice echoed as he sipped at it.

"You said dessert, and I haven't decided," Sarah said. "Where did all this come from, anyway? Explain all this. Is it magic? This food, the bathrooms, the tent, the passage, all this—did you do it with magic?"

"Yes," he said, tilting up the cup, hungrily, to drink every last drop. "Naturally."

"So did you lie when you said you couldn't use magic anymore?"

"No," he said, scowling at the empty container and thumping his gloved fingertips against his forehead. "Ow. Why does it hurt?"

"It's an ice-cream headache. I should have warned you, sorry. So where did all this come from, if you didn't produce it by magic?"

" _Must_ you interrogate me?" he said irritably, standing up and stalking away to the mud trench. "Can't you just be happy with what I give you, instead of asking why-why-why?" He took up a long knife and began to chop at a handful of straw, reducing it to blowing chaff that he swept angrily into the muddy trench. "This headache is poisonous. You've poisoned me. It was a mistake, feeding you."

"Oh, Jareth," Sarah sighed, "You're such a jackass." She put down the remains of her sandwich—not without a small regret—and kicked off her shoes and socks and rolled up the cuffs on her jeans. She laid her jacket on the bench and walked over to him, the earth shifting comfortably under her toes. Unafraid of the knife in his hands, she wrapped her arms around his chest and hugged him. "I'm not leaving," she whispered. "I'm not. I'm going to stay with you from now until… until the end. I promise. I won't leave until it's over."

She felt his arm clench the knife, and then drop it to the sand, and he pressed her arms tighter into his chest. He gave a long stuttering sigh.

"I'm sorry I was rude," Sarah said. "Really, it was a marvelous sandwich." She kissed the arch of flesh between his neck and shoulder.

"Your breath smells of mustard," he said after a bit, letting her go. Sarah flicked his ear for impertinence, and then jumped down into the muddy trench. She'd misjudged the depth of the mud; it came up over her shins. She yowled with displeasure and Jareth smiled down at her, tossing an armful of chaff over her head like confetti. "You're going to help me, then?"

"I guess so," Sarah said amiably, lifting one foot and then another out of the slooshy, sticky mud. "That's why I came. To help."

"Good. Then don't whine. You're already dirty and smelly. A little mud won't hurt you." He tossed another armful of finely chopped straw into the pit with her. "And maybe I do have some magic to use. Look, I've turned a brunette into a blonde." He laughed at her as she felt the crown of straw-fluff coating her wind-tangled hair.

"How long?" Sarah asked, looking down at the mud.

Jareth knelt down at the lip of the trench so they were eye-to-eye. "With your help, perhaps less than three days. Three days and the work will be done." He picked a few pieces of chaff from her eyebrows and brushed the hair from her face. "But today, we work only until an hour before dusk." He tugged her forward by a lock of her hair, and knotted it back from her face with three easy gestures. "I won't expect too much from you. I know how tired you are." He patted the side of her face, and she realized from the stickiness that he'd painted a stripe over her cheek.

"You're going to get quite a lot more from me than you ever expected, O Goblin King," Sarah said threateningly, and began to churn the trench with her bare feet. "Just you wait."

* * *

They whiled away the long afternoon in work and snatches of conversation. Sarah tried to keep things light, treading away from snark and interrogations. The labor helped her, kept her moving and thinking despite her weariness. Jareth, too, was careful at first with her, not being too serious, biting his lip or turning to a task when Sarah skirted around the edges of asking the question, the only question that mattered: _"Why are you doing this?"_ Eventually they relaxed in the work together. Jareth hummed snatches of song under his breath. At first the song was in that minor key note that made the day bleak. He glanced over at her, became silent, and began again, singing bits and pieces of a little ditty about her strong feet, her green eyes, and how irritatingly delicious she looked covered in mud.

"I didn't realize," he said quietly during the death of the afternoon, combing straw-mixed mud into the wooden flats of the brick-molds.

"Realize?"

"That I could still sing." He stabbed his trowel into a new brick. His back was turned to her, but she could see the anger radiating off him like stink-lines. "You made me remember."

Sarah filled one of the buckets with the brick mixture, trying to give his feelings a little privacy. When she lifted the bucket to the lip of the trench, grunting at the weight, he was looking at her. _He's so miserably unhappy_ , Sarah thought. I _wish there was something I could do._ He looked away from her quickly and stabbed the brick a few more times.

"Jareth," she said softly. "Tell me what I can do for you? Right here, right now. What should I do?"

He came to her and plucked her out of the mud-pit and held on to her. "Just don't leave," he said. "Don't leave."

"I promised I wouldn't," Sarah said. "I won't." She wriggled in his arms; he was making it hard for her to breathe. He reluctantly let her go.

"The light will fade soon," he said. "And you are a mess. Shall we bathe?"

"Yes," said Sarah. "And then sleep. I want sleep. I'm so tired, Jareth." She'd walked all night, and worked all day, and at some point hunger and exhaustion had ceased to matter. But now her fatigue came quietly roaring back, making her weak. She couldn't think anymore. All of the conversations she'd tried to start with him had come to nothing. She scrubbed her eyes with the one clean place on her right wrist. Her favour was daubed and dotted with slurry. "I'm tired and I hurt. And you're tired, and you hurt. And you won't let me help you." Her tears came down like rain. She turned her back on him, ashamed of crying. It felt like a form of blackmail.

"There there," he said kindly. "Poor Sarah. I've put you through quite a lot, haven't I?" He heaved her up into his arms and walked toward the oasis and let her snuffle against his shoulder. She reached up and laid two fingers on his amulet, clutched it like a talisman.

"Here we are," he said, stopping deep in the oasis, and set her on her feet. "The Wadi. Pretty, isn't it?"

It was pretty, incredibly pretty. The sandy soil had given way to paving-stones of gray marble, and lush plants grew around them. The pool itself was several pools—Jareth had gone here periodically during the afternoon and returned with a double yoke of water-buckets for the brickworks. The first pool was deep, and steaming, and smelled faintly of sulfur, with the same gray marble cut or laid into steps leading in. The second pool was cold, running trickling into the heated water and closed by a primitive sluice of wood. The third pool was all made of runoff, wasting away into the stones to quench the thirst of the verdure growing round about.

"Evening rituals at the close of the day," he said, unlacing the flies of his leather pants. "It's fine," he said, when Sarah thought to turn away. "I don't mind you, Sarah."

"Because I don't matter," she said bitterly. She resented how beautiful he was, naked, pale as wax everywhere but the touches of color of his face, the red-amber of his sex, the sugar-pinkness of his knees and his ankles when he removed his filthy boots.

"No, because you're as close to me as my own skin." He stripped off his gloves and brushed away at a little of the dried mud on her face. "Do you mind _me_?" he asked.

"No," she said brokenly.

"Hunt the flesh, skin the girl," he said with a teasing smile, and grabbed the hem of her dirty and wrecked t-shirt. "Arms over your head." He peeled off her shirt. "Now here's a challenge," he said, after a few moments of trying to work the catch of her bra. One hook wouldn't come free, and he slit it open in frustration with one pass of his index finger.

"I needed that," Sarah protested weakly.

"That torture device?" His fingertips traced the red indentations of the underwiring on her chest and under her arms. "Why not wear a hair shirt instead? It does wonders for the circulation." He bent down and licked her erect nipple with the flat of his tongue. She allowed herself to enjoy his mouth for one moment longer than was strictly necessary, and pushed his head away.

"Please," she said. "I can't."

He got down on his knees before her and worked open the buttons of her jeans and pushed them down off her hips, along with her underwear. She was a muddy mess from thigh to toe; some of the slurry had obviously soaked through her jeans. She steadied herself against him. "Please," she said, begging. "I won't leave you. You don't have to bribe me!" Sarah was on the edge of tears again. The decision was still before her, and she wasn't ready to make it. Sex would make everything so much harder.

"You asked what you could do for me," he said. "What you can do is let me pleasure you until you're cross-eyed, Sarah. I've waited all day for dessert, after all, and you look like a piece of cake." He sucked tingling kisses on her naked thighs and looked up at her.

"You could let me break my promises," Sarah said, wanting to slap him for not listening, and also to slap him for not kissing her more in the place her body wanted him most. She settled on not slapping him. "Please, not tonight. After I've slept, yes, you can have everything."

He watched her face, tracing teasing patterns in his saliva with his tongue. She shuddered and her hips bucked at him reflexively. _Traitorous body. Damn him_.

"Everything, but later?" he asked, helping her step out of her jeans. Now they were both naked, except for his amulet, which he hadn't removed, and her key on its leather thong, which he hadn't deigned to touch. And of course, her favour, which felt like a lead weight on her arm.

He picked her up and carried her to the pool. "Cruel Sarah, always making me wait." The hot water soaked into her bones and she melted against him, soft and pliant. The whiff of sulfur couldn't overcome the scents of rich growing green plants exhaling in the mist of the pool, or the scent of Jareth, coming free of sweat and dirt, of sudden summer rain, and sun, and amber, and sex. He bathed her tenderly and carefully as if she were an invalid, though she felt the strength of his erection nudging against her buttocks. He poured handfuls of hot water over her hair, made her clean with his caress, holding her in his lap.

"Just once?" he asked, like a child begging for a sweet, as his fingers folded between her labia. "Not everything, but a little something? For me?"

"I'm definitely going to slap you," Sarah moaned, arching against the pressure of his fingers, hooking her arms up around his neck. His free hand crept to her breasts and pinched her so that she gasped.

"Slap me in the morning instead," he suggested. "Please?" His dangerous fingers parted her open and caressed her.

"You don't listen," Sarah said, squirming to get more. "Fine!" she said, and moaned as his fingers tickled over to pinch her other nipple. "But don't come inside me," she insisted, even as her hips ground low against him, her body asking for something her exhausted mind couldn't deal with. "Oh, I hate you," she said, as he sucked hard kisses, toothsome kisses, against her throat.

"No, you don't," he said fondly. "You love me. You love me to _death_. What's this? A jewel or a flower?" he asked, trapping her eager, animal bits between his knuckles and spanning her whole sex with his hand. "Don't you like this, truly, Sarah?" His breath trickled into her ear and he gently bit the edge of her jaw. "Sweet flesh, so open to me. So much desire."

Sarah whimpered and squirmed. She was close, so very close, and all it had taken were a few caresses, a few words. How had she ever had the hubris to pretend her will was as strong as his? He wanted to have his way, and she couldn't summon the power to refuse him. Not when it was this sweet, not when it was this good.

"Well? Do you want me to stop?" He fishhooked his shins around hers and spread her knees with his.

"No," she said brokenly. He curved against her, and she could feel him beneath her, like a predator, ready to come inside her and tear her open, body and soul. The heat of him burned her, and she did not, she did not want that. She froze in his arms. "Don't come inside me," she said, fiercely, eyes closed. "Stay out. I mean it!" She moaned as he teased her again, and her nether-mouth attempted to find and devour him.

"I won't," he whispered. "Don't be afraid. I won't." He caressed her again, reassuring slow strokes of his fingers. "I won't. But you. Make those sounds you make. Sing for _me_ , Sarah."

She did.

"And kiss me now," he commanded, at the moment when she was almost past comprehending words. "I want your breath when you shatter."

* * *

After that, after he'd stolen her last bit of energy in an orgasm so explosive it felt like a gunshot wound, she wasn't aware of anything but that he'd kept his promise, making her come and not demanding a reciprocal embrace with any of her orifices which were, at that point, more than willing to entertain him, or at least not up to mounting any useful resistance. He didn't even ask. Instead, Jareth carried her into the tent and laid her down on embroidered cushions, covered her nakedness with a rug, and went out again.

She wanted to rest, badly, but kept startling awake, afraid she was dreaming, afraid she'd never see him again. When he came back, stepping over her, and lay down on a bed beside her, she was comforted.

In the darkness of the pavilion, he kept reaching out to touch her, reaching down from his bed to tap his fingertips against her shoulder, her hip—not to wake her, or to arouse her, but as if she were a worry-doll, a touchstone, a treasure—something he needed to reassure himself was truly there.

Sarah rolled to her knees, groggily, and Jareth immediately sprang up like a jack-in-the-box.

"What is it?" he asked anxiously.

"Nothing," Sarah grumbled. "Budge over." She crawled into his bed next to him and pulled his arm over her. "You'll sleep better this way. And I'll sleep, full stop."

He tugged his arm away, shifted as if to sit up, but Sarah held on to his arm. "I'll need my gloves," he said apprehensively. "Or I might scratch you."

"You won't," Sarah said in furious exhaustion. "But you _will_ scratch me if you keep trying to touch me every five minutes. Be the big spoon and shut up."

"Big spoon?" he said, but he quit trying to resist her and tucked his arm and shoulder over her.

"I'll be the little spoon. You'll be the big spoon," Sarah instructed. "You won't need to reach for me if I'm right here. Now _shut up_ and let me sleep."

"Big spoon. What if I'd rather fork?" he murmured against her ear, rubbing his heated length against her naked and unresisting flesh.

"Hush" Sarah said, holding his arm between hers, and kissing his hand. "You. Sleep."

The center of her dreams was in the flesh, and sleeping warm beside her. Warm and alive, and there.

* * *

**_Next…Chapter 23: "The Last Door"_  
**

* * *

_Praise and please and thank-you and the sun and the moon and the stars for my beautiful beta friends, **Nyllewell** and **FrancesOsgood** , who've helped me shape this story brick by brick._ _Reviews are always treasured by yours truly, but my beta readers appreciate them too. They've worked very hard._

_Were the World Mine is the most beautiful version of  A Midsummer Night's Dream I have ever experienced. With song lyrics adapted from the original Shakespeare, I have bent some of these lyrics to use for Sarah's internal monologue._


	23. The Last Door

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Soundtrack for Chapter 23:
> 
> "The Funeral"—Band of Horses "  
> Sometimes"—Ours  
> "Little Lies"—Fleetwood Mac
> 
> Author's Note: This chapter contains sexual situations. Reader discretion is advised.

**The Last Door**

* * *

 

She had had a very strange dream. She had dreamed she was in the Labyrinth, only it was becoming too small, or she was growing too big. All the little people there built their homes and dug their gardens in the folds of her body and her clothing. Some of them ate her flesh, and she couldn't even scratch their lousy bites because it would have hurt them. And there under the dome was one thin crack, like a varicose ulcer. If she could just make it a little bigger, peel the shell around it a little wider, she could get out and stretch herself for the first time in forever. But if she left, what would all the little people do? And if she stayed, how much longer would it be before she hated everything so much that she destroyed them all, merely for something new to do?

_Jareth_ , Sarah thought, opening her eyes.

It was morning, and he had left her. He had moved her while she slept; she was just at the edge of the tent, with the crimson veils tied back so she could see him, a bolster under her head, the light kissing her body through a thin draping of green gauze. He was wearing his patched and stained leather pants, his boots and work-gloves, and—a curb on her appetite for his body—a delicate-looking loose gray sleeveless shirt, much washed and mended. She could see him working at the brick-molds, ladling water over the forms and releasing the bricks. It was a pleasure to watch him.

He was carrying on a conversation, too, with one tiny fairy, or at least answering to its low humming language in plain English.

"Hungry, are you? But there's nothing here for you to eat. Why don't you go on back to where your flowers grow? Plenty there."

The fairy gave a chiming twitter and alit on his wrist.

"Yes, I know, but that's not for you. That's for Sarah." He raised his arm up and the fairy launched itself at a covered dish sitting on the bench. The fairy jumped up and down and twittered urgently at Jareth.

"No, I'm not going to ask her to share, because she's sleeping. Fly off. You're being a pest." Jareth gave Sarah a glance as he mentioned her name, saw her open eyes, and came to her, dusting his gloves on his thighs.

"You are awake," he said, smiling at her. "Or no. Not quite awake yet." She blinked her eyes at him, and he came over to her and put his hand on her forehead. "Sleepyhead," he said fondly. "Are you ready for your breakfast, or would you like to lie here a bit longer?"

She blinked at him again and closed her eyes. He kissed her ear and left her. She vacillated in the between state of sleeping and wakefulness, closing her eyes and dreaming of him, opening her eyes and watching him work.

"Mmm," she finally said, sitting up. She glanced behind her at the interior of the tent. It was efficiently cluttered with wooden boxes and softened with red rugs and cushions. Isinglass and gilt lamps hung from the crossbeams, and Jareth's cloak of feathers was there, too, folded over a rod between two pegs. There was no sign of any of her possessions. "Where are my clothes?" she asked, realizing the gauzy green throw she was wearing was as good as transparent. She tried to double the fabric over her breasts, but it remained sheer.

"Where-where-where," Jareth said ominously. "If your questions had a stopping-point, I'd bother to tell you." He rinsed his arms in the water-bucket and came over to her, picking up a dish covered in a white porcelain dome and the little bench where she'd had her lunch the day before. He bent at the waist to kiss her mouth, and set the dish on the bench between them, like a doll's picnic lunch.

"What is it?" Sarah asked, looking at the dish mistrustfully.

"What-what-what," he said chidingly. With a flourish, he lifted off the porcelain cover. In the round bone-china dish were an assortment of fruits—strawberries, pomegranates, grapes, apples, but no peaches—which had the perfection and the diamante sparkle of carved jewels. Jareth selected one bright red strawberry studded with opal seeds, and smelled it with pleasure. "Open your mouth," he said, in a tone that reminded Sarah of their interlude together in the Wadi. She did, and he placed the fruit over her tongue. "You're fond of this type of fruit, but you've never tasted anything like this. Eat," he said.

She turned her face aside and looked at him suspiciously, but he anticipated her gesture and kept the strawberry seated in her mouth. His tone was dark and intense. "It would please me, Sarah, if you would eat."

She broke the fruit open with her lips and teeth, the juice spurting over her tongue. It was a strawberry, but it also had a strange taste to it, wild and strange, one she couldn't help but associate with the peach Hoggle had delivered, so long ago. _The taste of magic_ , Sarah thought. She closed her eyes to savor the taste. Jareth leaned forward and sucked the juice from her lips.

"And that's the third time you've taken food from my hands, Sarah," Jareth said, pleased. He looked at the bowl and popped several onyx grapes into his mouth. "We must not go with goblin men," he teased. "We must not buy their fruits." He fed her one of his grapes.

"I'm not buying," Sarah said, opening her mouth for a second strawberry, chewing it carefully. "These are free samples."

"Nothing is free," he informed her. "Nothing comes for nothing."

"Why—" Sarah said, eyebrows furrowing, but Jareth interrupted her.

"Why-why-why. What is it about your middle age that makes you so intent on asking questions you know the answers to? Eat your royal jelly, Queen Bee." He pressed another grape against her lips, and Sarah felt the bile rise in the back of her throat. She shook her head.

"But you must," he said. "I want you to." His smile was sad and strange.

"I'd rather have something else right now, please," Sarah said politely. "Leftovers from a hundred-year-old party aren't appropriate for breakfast."

"Very well," Jareth said, covering the dish and placing it in the shadowed interior of the tent. "Tonight you can finish." He stroked her hair as he passed her by, and returned to stacking the light-and-heat-baked bricks fresh from their molds.

"You'll share the meal with me," Sarah said calmly. "I hate eating alone."

He kept glancing up at her as he labored. "As the Queen commands." He broke into a sudden, gleeful smile. "Are you planning to work with me today, or are you content to merely inspire me with your rather glorious nudity?" He half-closed his eyes and gave a slight tilt of his head to the right.

"I'll work," Sarah said. She stood up and let the silken green gauze float down her arms and thighs. There was a look in Jareth's eyes she'd only ever seen before on men, human men and boys, in those rare and perfect moments when she felt herself using the full force of her beauty upon them and knew how powerfully it overwhelmed them. She knew that look, even though it passed over Jareth's face as quickly as a shadow over the moon. The power and glory of life and womanhood, she made it shine hard upon him, prepared to blind him. The taste of the fruit was still in her mouth.

For one moment, she knew she filled his inhuman psyche so completely that there was no room for any other thought. And how could it not be this way, when in the first moment she saw him as a girl at fourteen, his imperious beauty had undone her in the same way? She had learned this trick from him, after all. She even remembered the smile he'd given her. She gave him the same one now.

"You like this," Sarah said, stretching her arms over her head, bathing in the light. She stared at him, triumphant.

Jareth closed his mouth with a snap, visibly confused. He blushed and looked away, hands fumbling for the next brick. "Your clothes are hanging over on the right side of the tent. I washed them for you."

"Thank-you, Jareth," Sarah said. She waited for him to look back at her, but he didn't. Sarah stepped lightly over the gauzy sheet and found her clothing, scraped clean and dry, folded on top of her untouched backpack. The brassiere was a complete loss, but her jeans and t-shirt would have to serve. She dressed and grabbed her toothbrush and went to visit the necessary on the other side of the wall.

The cement was cold under her feet. Her reflection in the polished metal mirror was wobbly and dull, and her hair was a nightmare of wind-dried tangles. She stared at herself. _Keep your wits, Sarah. He's going to win at this game if you don't watch out. You need to play the game. Yesterday he made his play. Today, you make yours._

She forced two fingers deep into her throat, and threw up her breakfast of fairy fruit. Her stomach seemed to turn inside-out. The bits and pieces of fruit floating in the toilet looked almost identical to the fruit in the porcelain dish, and she vomited again, mucus and bile, to defile them. She looked at the mess in satisfaction, and then looked back at herself in the mirror.

_What do I need?_ Sarah asked herself.

_Find what he's put inside you, and pluck it out_ , she told herself. _Honestly, Sarah. You can use magic now. So use it. See it with your mind's eye and take it where it needs to be. It needs to be OUT._

She closed her eyes and hung her head. She could see the interior of her body, like a galaxy of green stars. There. Her belly. What had she taken in? Was there anything there that wasn't purely of herself? She hunted around, smelling, sensing, tasting herself in her mind's eye, looking for tampering. There, there were the edges of fairy fruit Jareth had scavenged from the Fairy Ring. _Out of me_ , she thought. _Come out of me_.

She could tell there was more, was much more—there was a layer of something supernatural that permeated her entire being, but she wasn't ready yet to deal with that. It felt old, and crusted on. _First things first_. She summoned a crystal to her hand, and as she played with it, she felt the effects of the fruit coming loose from her. It felt like a tearing. When she let the crystal rest in her hand, it disgorged pulp and juice over her palm. She washed it off and looked at herself in the mirror again.

_Play the game_ , she thought. _Play, and win_. She combed her hair with her fingers and gave herself a final intimidating look.

The red wound in the sky pulsed with flickering darkness, casting the illusion of clouds over her head. _You're next_ , she thought.

* * *

"Perhaps something else would agree with you more," Jareth said when she came back to his camp. He had a large hand-mill on his knee, about a foot square. "What would you like? Bring that plate," he said, nodding to a stack of dull small dishes sitting on the bench near him.

"Turtle soup?" Sarah asked. "No. Sorry. Not that. Hot coffee and croissants. For two."

Jareth nodded and whispered a few words to the mill as he turned the crank. In three turns, he opened the little door and out popped two coffee cups and four buttery croissants.

"Normal food," he said, handing one of the cups to Sarah. " _Human_ food. Perfectly safe."

"For you, too?" Sarah asked, taking a careful sip. "How?"

"Once I set out to build that passage, I knew I had to do it without magic. So I laid my preparations in advance. The Wadi, the easements, both are real. I tied them both to me in advance. It was a strong spell, and it's lasted seven years. They're never more than one hundred steps away. I didn't like the idea of having to walk back through the entire Labyrinth every time I needed… well. You get the idea. The mill is magic in itself. I've used it to grind out any materials I need. It's all allowed, provided what I ask for isn't magical in nature."

"Loopholes," Sarah said, but she had to admire his planning, even as it enraged her. She took a bite of the croissant. It was buttery and delicious.

"Just so," Jareth said. "I had a few false starts at the beginning. I would dream of flight, and wake up in my owl form, beating my wings against the limit of the sky. I had to tear everything down and begin again. It's a mortal death I'm trying to earn, Sarah." He set the mill down and ripped the lid off his coffee and drank half of it in one go. "Mortal food, mortal drink. Mortal work, a mortal path for an immortal's death."

"With a few supernatural luxuries," Sarah chided.

"Well, why shouldn't I have a very few basic comforts? A good thing, too, considering how long I've been building this wall."

"John Company will be pleased," Sarah said, not looking at him. "You know what he said to me, in the Observatory? He said he wanted you unbound. He wanted you free. You're going to do what he tells you?"

"We _are_ both Kings, Sarah. And more, brothers by rite of trial. It doesn't frighten me to occasionally agree with him." He tore the bread apart and ate it in small economical bites. "Ah, but you're angry with me today. That didn't take long." He sighed.

"When you're gone, he'll come and tear the Labyrinth apart. What will this land do without its King?"

"But I've made provision for a new monarch. Haven't I?" He watched her over the rim of his cup.

"How—" Sarah began.

"How-how-how," Jareth said bleakly. "Must you be so stupid?" Then he turned away.

They worked that day in silence, in the vestibule of the crossroads. It was cold there, cold as the interior of the restrooms. Jareth had been busy, very busy while she slept the morning away; there were neat stacks of bricks ready to set in place, and a square palette of fresh mud for mortar. There was even a flat angular mat woven of reeds and straw, thickly latticed and braided and daubed with clay in the chinks between the knots, about the size of a mattress, trapezoidal in shape, like the spirit-doors for the Egyptian ka. Sarah looked at the oblong shape leaning against the nearly finished curve in the vestibule, and the cold shadowed interior suddenly felt colder.

"It's a literal door," Sarah said shortly, looking at it in dislike. _The door. The door to his death is a literal door._

"Oh yes," Jareth said, laying the last brick of the curve in place. Now there was only the lintel, which he outlined in smooth strokes of the trowel. "Not quite ready to be placed," he said, with satisfaction. "But soon. Perhaps tonight."

Sarah kicked the unbound door hard with the sole of her shoe, hard kicks that bent the door and cracked it in three places.

"You're just buying time," Jareth said flatly. He didn't scold her further. He didn't even seem angry. He just set to, stripping his gloves, and began to repair the broken places.

Sarah stalked angrily back to the tent. "No shoes in the tent!" he yelled after her, but she defiantly tracked sand over the opulent red carpets, wondering what else of his she might break or ruin. She grabbed up one of the pillows from his low camp bed and screamed into it, stamping her feet.

_Magic_ , she thought furiously. _He wanted me to learn magic. Well, here's some magic, Jareth_. She raised her hand into the summoning position and began to work.

* * *

She stared at the steel handcuffs and the box of Morton's salt sitting in front of her.

"So," Jareth said gently. Sarah jumped, tried to cover the guilty evidence with her hands, and realized it was no use. She held up the steel manacles and stared at him through their apertures.

"Is this your plan?" he said, sitting down on the little bench before her. He looked sad and defeated. "Plan to bring me back to the goblin's throne in chains?"

"If that's what it takes," Sarah said darkly. "Whatever it takes."

He looked her in the eyes. Normally his face was so expressive, but now it was still. He held out his wrists to her.

"If it be your will, keep me prisoner. I won't resist."

She held out the half-circles and pressed their curved edges against his skin. He gave small whine of pain, deep in his throat, as the metal hissed against his flesh, burning him, making him smoke. He kept his eyes fixed on her face. His naked anguish pierced her to the quick, but he didn't flinch, and he didn't cry. He waited.

"I can't," she said, "Oh, I can't." She ripped the handcuffs away, taking some of his skin with them, and threw them out into the sand. "Why can't I do it?" She kissed the wounds on his wrists, tasting his arcane, acidic blood. In moments, the red marks faded to pale pink, and then they were gone. "I don't know how to save you, Jareth. What curse are you under that keeps me from saving you?"

He held her close, as if he was the one who'd hurt her. He rocked her slowly in his arms. "The curse of immortality," he said. "I am cursed to live and live and live. I used to wonder how humanity could bear it, the weight of flesh, the horrid experience of eating, shitting, sneezing, being hungry, being ticklish, of _having_ a feeling instead of _being_ one. Then later I understood that the compensation was the ability to grow. To change. Even to die. This body I'm trapped in… it would be bearable if I understood that one day I would change, cast off its imperfections and take on perfection. But I'm caught. Caught between death and life. And unless I can manage to change, I will never return to my People again." He stilled his motion and stroked her hair. "Please help me, Sarah. Help me to change. Help me die. I can't be stabbed or shot or starved or beheaded or poisoned. I should know. I've tried everything. But there is one death I can have. And then I can go back to my People. I can forget everything. It's the only form of grace my people have. To forget. To begin again."

"Isn't there anything I can say?" Sarah asked. "Anything I can do?"

"No," he said gently, and rocked her against his shirt. "But you can make my last days beautiful, Sarah. Do what you did when you first saw my Labyrinth. Be my companion and my distraction. Talk with me. Eat with me, drink with me. Lay down with me and love me. Give me everything you can give. And if you can find the strength, open that last door for me of your own free will."

"What if I can't?" Sarah said, her breath hitching.

"Then I'll have to compel you. And that would make me very, very sad."

The red wound in the sky pulsed darkly, and the light began to fade.

"See?" Jareth said, pointing upward. "The will of Heaven, and Hell, is apparently aligned with yours. I can only work while the light lasts. Evening has come to us early. Will you come and bathe with me? Tomorrow morning, when it comes, will be the right time for all last things."

"I ought to wish that tonight lasts a year and a day," Sarah said, as he helped her to her feet. He tucked her arm under his and led her to the Wadi.

"Ah, but is that wish cruel, or generous?" he said. "I've already waited so long."

* * *

Her hands paused as she massaged the tight muscles of his neck and shoulders, sitting in the bathing pool.

"What is it?" he asked, plinking his fingers over the surface of the water.

"Nothing," Sarah said. Then, reconsidering, "I've never been this intimate with anyone before."

"What, never?" He sighed as she began to unweave a particularly stubborn series of knots in his neck and left shoulder.

"No," Sarah said. "You?" His shoulders went stiff with some unhappy memory, and she wrapped her legs around his waist and hugged him with her thighs. "Want to talk about it?" Sarah asked cautiously.

He held his breath and then let it out, and splashed his hands in the water some more, turning them up and down, letting his arms float just below the surface. "A few times. A few people. Not always the circumstances I would have chosen. But yes, I have been… intimate with human beings." He turned his head and looked up over his shoulder at her. "But never like this, Sarah. There's never been anyone quite like you." He turned back and let the water pour through his fingers. "Is it… nice for you?"

Sarah snorted and kissed his temple. "No, Jareth, it's completely horrible." She stroked his neck and asked him the question she'd been afraid to ask. "If I stayed," she said, lips numb. "If I promised to stay and always stay, would you change your plan?"

"No," he said, catching her hand between his and laying delicate tingling kisses over her fingers and favour. "I think you know why. You'll die, and I'll live. I'll live and live and become a monster. I won't even bother to try to be good. I don't need a book of prophecy to read my future."

Sarah bit her lip, disappointed, and he patted her gently.

She unbound the knotted rag that held his hair against his scalp and it folded out in a wave of his distinctive scent, but the scrubby nightmare of tangles and elf-locks horrified her. "Your hair is a mess. When was the last time you combed it?" She tried to pick the band of cloth out of his hair, but some of the frayed edges had married itself to the thick tangles of his scalp.

"Don't pull!" he snapped. "That hurts!" He grumbled as Sarah carefully smoothed out the knotted length over one arm.

"Well, if you'd taken care of yourself before, it wouldn't hurt now!" She tried to run her hands through the sweat-damp carpet of his insubstantially-fine pelt of hair, and was stopped in fewer than two inches by a series of ugly snarls. He whined and bitched at her as she used her fingers to smooth it into two manageable parts. It floated over the water like the canopy of birds' wings. _Seven years_ , Sarah thought, looking at the length. Clean and brushed, it might reach his waist, or perhaps puff up like a dandelion clock under a blow-dryer. Jareth on the stems of his two skinny legs, with just a massive static-electric cloud of hair obscuring everything else. The idea made her laugh.

"What are you laughing at?" Jareth grumbled.

"You," Sarah said.

"Young Finnvarrah-Vercingetorix never laughed at me," Jareth said imperiously.

"Finnvah isn't here," Sarah said curtly, rinsing his hair in the water, even though she knew it would make the task of untangling it harder. "So you just stick a cork in your complain-hole, Jareth." She rubbed his scalp in the places where she inadvertently tugged, but wasn't particularly gentle. "When was the last time you had this cut?" Sarah asked in exasperation. Really, it would be easier to just shave him bald and begin again. Except there would be no beginning again.

"When was the last time I had the services of a goblin barber?" he barked. "Can't you handle me with more delicacy?"

"No," Sarah said. "Plug your nose. You're going under." She dipped him and pulled herself out of the pool before she began to prune, and summoned a comb and began her work in earnest. There was so much to do, and so little time to do it in. Jareth complained when she didn't treat him like the Faberge egg he clearly believed himself to be, but as the hour wore on and she worked, he would say things apropos of nothing.

When he spoke, she paused to listen to him, but continued serenely to comb him smooth. Some of what he said to her froze her blood or burned her with rage, but she gave him no advice and asked no questions.

"He made me eat. I told him no. A peach. Just a bite. One bite was enough. I was so hungry."

"He wasn't particularly careful when he fucked me. I was half-mad with whatever morphine mixture he'd jabbed into me anyway. So it didn't really hurt. But he had me, and I couldn't stop him."

"When he first spoke to me, everything came into focus. It was the first voice I heard and understood during my trial. I imprinted like a hatchling. There's so much of me that's like him. Perhaps that's why the other fae left me alone after that."

"I wonder sometimes how it could have been different. What choices I could have made, or refused to make. But then there would have been no Jareth, no young Finnvarrah-Vercingetorix. No Labyrinth to perplex and torment young Sarah."

To this last, Sarah had responded. "I'm glad there's a Jareth. I'm glad there's a Labyrinth. I love them."

"You would," he said dourly. "Contrary, obstinate girl."

At the end of a too-short hour, he stopped speaking. He was very still in the water. And Sarah had his hair flowing in a river of silken gold over her thighs. There were other colors in it too, other textures, strands of gray or brown or red and even cerulean blue that wound through it. She looked over at the ball of tangled fuzz that the comb had separated, and tossed it up and let the rising wind carry it away. She rinsed his hair through again, braided it back in a narrow queue, coiled it, and stuck the comb down into the ends to finish it off. "There," she said. "All done."

"Finally," he groused. "What is this plastic thing?" he asked, stamping gorgeously out of the water, pulling out the comb and letting the braid uncurl over her shoulder. He stared at the comb in his hands as if it were significant, but Sarah couldn't see anything unusual about it. Black plastic, missing a few of its teeth. Nothing special. But Jareth held it against his breast like it was a precious artifact, and thanked her with royal gravity.

* * *

The rapid wrath of the wind, which the plants of the Wadi broke, was fierce against her face as they scuttled back to the tent. He drew the flaps of the tent close together and lit the tiny lamps with a reed. "Our clothes," Sarah reminded him, but he pulled her naked body close to his, and kissed her in reply. "Leave them," he said. "Tomorrow, they won't matter anyway."

His kisses were warm and careful, and they moved her deeply. His naked hands were clever with her body. And he let her trace the indentation of flesh that ran from his breastbone to belly, let her feed her hunger for his skin. His hands on her quickly discovered her usual paths to pleasure—a bite to the neck, lips and hands on her breasts, rough, explicit words in her ear. And he showed her a few things she hadn't discovered before about herself, which were deeply gratifying, and surprising—the web of her fingers, so sensitive, the curl of the arm-joint, fond caresses over her knees, the implacability of his two hands sweetly crushing her cheeks apart. "Should I?" he breathed over her, poised at her gate, which had bloomed, ripe and wet, to welcome him. "Shall I?"

"Please, yes. Yes. Come in." And then he came into her, very carefully, not even all of himself, which still might have hurt her even if she wasn't a virgin. He moved inside her slowly, easing his way with his fingers, and it didn't hurt at all. He hovered over her, watching her face. "No," she said, shaking her head. She pushed him back, and he slipped from her. She climbed in his lap, fitted herself to him, gritting her teeth when the pain, as expected, did come. "I want it to hurt," she said. "Just a little." And she wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him. The pain wasn't for now; it would be for later, so she could have the proof of an ache in his absence.

Although she could feel the distance he put between himself and her, even in the act of bringing his flesh to hers in the closest embrace, she found she didn't resent it. He took exquisite care of her. He watched her face and treasured her skin. When the peak came for him, it was only following hers, and he let her cling to him and call out his name. She cried out "Jareth!" and he answered, "Yes," and held her and caressed her. He demonstrated that he held nothing she wanted or offered in contempt.

"I love you," she whispered, wrapping her legs around his back, tying the knot with her ankles. She thumped her heels against his kidneys, just to make sure he was listening. He smiled ruefully and buried his face in her shoulder. She felt him breathe. "I love you, Jareth." She was delirious, languid, tangled in his lap and his arms, and he was generous.

"Yes." He looked up at her, tucking a damp curl of her hair behind her ear. "Thank you, Sarah. I'm glad you do. I…" but he let the sentence remain unfinished and kissed her again instead.

* * *

"Are you tired, Sarah?" he asked later, unpeeling himself from her. The walls of the pavilion pulsed and bellied in the moaning wind. "Would you like to sleep now?"

"Not particularly," she said. "I'd rather spend time with you."

"Naked?" he teased, crouching to open a wooden box. He shook out the folds of a pair of loose white trousers and buttonless shirt and slipped them over his sweat-sexed skin.

"If you have anything that will fit me," Sarah said dubiously.

Jareth dug deeper in the box and pulled out a miniscule sewing kit. He took her green gauze sheet of the night before and, with a pair of bronze scissors and a bone needle and thread, quickly turned the fabric into a caftan.

"That's worse than naked," Sarah said, watching his fingers fly, so clever, so knowing. Jareth paused and embroidered a seven-pointed star over the left breast of the garment. "There," he said. "To protect your modesty."

"It's still not very modest," Sarah said.

"Neither are you," he countered, drawing the green film over her nakedness.

"You're a good tailor," Sarah said, leaning back into the cushions. Jareth took up a hand broom and swept the sand they'd tracked in, to the very perimeter of the rugs. "So domestic."

"Yes, well I had to be. Anyway, I've always enjoyed making my own clothes. So. Are you hungry?"

Sarah stretched herself lasciviously. "I've been very well-fed, but yes, perhaps I could have a bit more."

"And perhaps that wasn't even what I meant, you hoyden." He brought out the ominous china plate and cover from where he'd stashed it earlier, and laid it between them, lying down next to her. He also produced a black bottle of wine, half-drunk, which he uncorked with a flourish. The scent of primroses and sex and delight and danger poured forth like spume. "Mmm," he said, smelling the cork with appetite. He handed her the bottle. "Drink," he said, smiling that cruel and inscrutable smile.

"I will," Sarah said, returning his smile with a steely stare. "If you drink with me." She took the bottle of fairy champagne from his hand, and drank. She handed it back to him. The liquor was potent but light, scintillating down her throat with burning sparks. It tasted like champagne and nothing like champagne, and she felt a certain powerful pleasure watching him drink, too. They divided the bowl of fruit between them in equal shares, and sometimes feeding each other. The wine went quickly to Jareth's head, making him tiddly for half-an-hour. For Sarah, it clarified everything. Everything but Jareth receded into shadowy unimportance.

"You are staying with me," he said, with a drunkard's broken laugh. "Doing everything with me. Why? Why don't you defy me? I love it when you struggle."

"I am," Sarah said. "Don't you see me? Don't you see me doing everything you ask, and still fighting you every step of the way?" She laughed and licked her fingers clean, and then licked his clean, too. And then she peeled him the way he'd peeled the fruit, and she had him again.

* * *

After the loving was over, she curled herself against him, making spoons, and she was the big spoon. The lamps had burnt out, and the night was almost done. He slept easily in her arms. And she could feel the wetness between them, the sex-liquid, dribbling out from between her thighs, but the greater part was inside her, swept up into her by the power of her orgasm, drunk up and inside her, helped on its way to the journey she needed them both to make. _It's time to begin_ , she thought. _Time to take the very last chance._

She closed her eyes and breathed evenly against his arched neck, so vulnerable against her teeth. _Journey in_ , she thought. _Journey now._

_Jareth, you taught me your magic. Now I will teach you mine_.

She saw once more, in her mind's eye, the interior of her body, the pavilions of red upon red that were couched inside her. There was an egg there, waiting to drop, there in the curved branch of her left ovary, cuticled in layers of flesh and attended by handmaidens of daughter-cells. And she could feel the bits of swimming tadpole life he'd set free to swim in the salt ocean of her body. _Swim_ , she willed them. _Swim to your goal. Come further in. I invite you_.

The egg, the crystal moon, dropped into the river of her fallopian tube and was swept by the current of her blood and her desire, down into the waiting chasm of blood and potential. _Fall faster_ , she willed it. _Fall and come to fruit, to wealth_.

And she could feel that egg, an island of gigantic proportions, gliding graceful as a queen to the supplicant suitors of his sperm.

_Eat_ , she commanded. _Eat of me. Eat and be_.

She felt the egg crack under the victorious mote of him, in a burst of light which denied all others. The best, the best of all. _Breach me, eat me, catalyze me, make me_. The light swelled through her body, so powerful she felt that her fingertips and toe tips and the strands of her hair must all be lighting in some deep signal.

"O my love," she said, softly, against Jareth's neck. _O_ , a word, and a new life generated.

The fertilized egg landed gently against the velvet lining of her thick-blooded uterine wall, and put down roots.

_Live_ , she thought. _Live and be, what's made between my beloved and me. Live and be. Oh, Jareth. How I love you_. She wept soft tears against his skin, and he did not wake. But she was changed, powerfully changed. What flesh had been hers alone was now mingled with his and him. She had taken him in, and would keep him forever. What had been necessary had been achieved. She had humbled and exalted herself.

She was pregnant.

* * *

Another morning and she awoke alone. There was a piece of her missing. Every waking in the Labyrinth had been a dress rehearsal for the future Jareth had determined for her. She would always awake without him, if he had his way. She would always awake alone for the rest of her life, if his will was stronger than hers.

She threw on the caftan and her green jacket, uncertain of where the rest of her clothing was. The brass key went around her neck. She still felt uncomfortably naked. And there was something wrong with her arm… her wrist was naked. Her favour was gone.

Panic stabbed through her like a dagger. Her eyes went to the rod where Jareth's feather-cloak had been folded, and saw it standing empty. She knew then the reason for her panic. It was time. There would be no more last meal together, and perhaps only one last conversation.

_Not without me_ , Sarah thought, undoing the flaps of the tent and throwing them open. _He can't go without me!_ The light was horrid and strange. Thick clouds like bruises collected around the wound in the sky, and the red wound had cracked and was bleeding red-black strobing darkness over the desert. How ominous the sky was, and how fragile the Labyrinth beneath it!

"Jareth," she said, stepping into the crossroads of this last outflung arm of the eternal maze, the end of his journey, and hers.

He moved out of the deep shadows of the long passage and stood before her. The threadbare tatters and shafts of his feathered cloak blew in the breeze. And he was naked too, although underneath the cloak he was wearing the pale shirt and pants she remembered from their confrontation in the Escher maze. Barefoot, and bare-handed, he was naked, because his amulet was no longer around his throat. It was in his hand, and he came to her, and gave her his warm and beating heart.

Sarah watched him.

"Give me my death now, Sarah," he said gently. "It's time. That is the handle for the door you'll need to open."

"What do I do with it?" Sarah asked calmly.

"Place it anywhere against the door, and it will do what it needs to. Through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered you have fought your way here to the gates at the very end of the Labyrinth. For your heart is warm where mine is cold, and your love is as strong as death."

She rubbed her thumb over and over the spiral sigil.

"I agreed to do this only if I'm the only one it hurt. Jareth, this will hurt everyone who needs the Labyrinth. We can't have a Kingdom without a King."

"But I've thought of that, Sarah," Jareth said gently. His long hair blew around his shoulders like a second cloak. "No one summoned you. No one compelled you, and yet you came and took up the very last challenge this King set his heir. The Labyrinth is yours now."

He held his hands out to her, open, beseeching. "Sarah, haven't I done what I was meant to do? I've cared for my Labyrinth and opened all the doors that I could open. I finished what I started when I came to your world. Haven't I done well, Sarah? Haven't I done enough?" His eyes were full of pain and fear, and she realized she had to answer him truthfully.

"Yes," she said quietly. "Yes, you've done marvelously well, Jareth. Your Labyrinth is beautiful and bigger than you or I could have ever made it alone. The work isn't finished. I don't think it'll ever be finished—but you've made it possible for others to take up the work that needs to be done." She gave him the truth, and oh, how the truth hurt.

The look on his face was relief. She hefted his amulet in her hand. It was his way out. Should she be kind or cruel?

Sarah weighed her judgment the way she weighed the metal in her palm. If she truly loved the Goblin King, she would help him die, and have faith that they would meet again in some other world, some other life. If she truly loved him, she would value him better than her own life, and have faith that her love was sufficient to answer for any cruelty she might have to do him. Either way, it was her choice. She was the mother of his unborn child. This power was hers and hers alone.

"The Kingdom will come to you, Sarah. It will be yours. All you need do… is open that door."

Sarah stared down at the amulet in her hand.

"Please," he said.

With trembling fingers, she placed his amulet against the door, felt it go to molten heat under her hand.

The wound in the sky burst open into a column of fire that pierced all the worlds Above and Below as she opened the last door for Jareth, Goblin King.

* * *

_**Next… Chapter 24: "The Death of the Goblin King"** _

* * *

_… I don't have much to say about this chapter, friends, other than that everything in the story so far has been leading to this moment. The Goblin King is weary, and wants his death the way that you or I would want to sleep after a long, lonely, painfully hard day. Love and duty demand that Sarah grant it to him. And yet…_


	24. The Death of the Goblin King

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Soundtrack for Chapter 24:
> 
> "Hallelujah"—Jeff Buckley  
> "Misguided Angel"—Cowboy Junkies  
> "Objects of My Affection"—Peter Bjorn and John

 

 

**The Death of the Goblin King  
**

* * *

 

This was the last chance, and this was the last moment.

Sarah had eaten with him, gotten drunk with him, shared her body with him, shared everything with him. She had helped to build this wall by the sweat of her brow. This door would be the death of him. But she had earned the right for it to be her door, too.

She stood before the door of the death of the Goblin King, and she blocked it with her body. He couldn't go through now unless he pushed her through with him.

She was the price. She was the risk. There were no tricks left, no magic. All she could put between herself and his death… was herself.

The open door was like the damper on a furnace, sucking in the air so she had to grip the door hard to keep from being thrown into the fiery whirlwind. Standing in the doorway of another person's death was heady, and frightening. She gasped with the pain of it.

"Sarah," Jareth said sternly. "Stand aside."

"No," Sarah said. "I can't… force you to stay. I have no power over you. But you have no power over me. No, stay back!" she shouted, as he darted a quick step forward. "You just stay where you are and listen to me." She braced her arms against the lintels. She felt her hair tug backwards into the vortex, and wondered if she would burn up before she could finish.

"Through… through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered. I want to go with you. You go through this door, I go too. But I go _first_."

Her feet slid in the sand as she struggled against the waiting death of the Goblin King. There was music in the fire, a music that sang to her of absolute endings, sang a lullaby of endless sleep without dreams.

Jareth wrapped his cloak around him tightly, a butterfly turning into a chrysalis.

_**They'll turn me in thy arms, lady,** _   
_**An adder and a snake;** _   
_**But hold me fast, don't let me go,** _   
_**To be your worldly mate.** _

"Sarah. Listen to me now. The death I've earned isn't a mortal death. That door behind you is the door to a fae death. Do you understand? That fire you feel licking at the edges of your hair will burn away the mortal part of me, smelt me down to my base essence. But for you? It will be Hell."

He approached one step closer, and Sarah retreated, just one step. His eyes met hers, full of cruel authority. When he spoke again, his words had the unmistakable ring of truth. "Don't you understand? A human soul cannot be ever burnt away. You will lose all your magic, all of your memory, and finally only the core of yourself that will never dissolve, but suffer ten thousand torments of an immortal age. Suffering without end, Sarah, and me without a memory of how to comfort you. You can't want that."

"I'm not afraid to suffer what you've suffered," she said. "I don't care about anything on the other side of this door, other than that you're there too." She looked at him sadly. "I trust you. I trust you not to forget me."

He looked at her, and stepped serpentine to her left, as if to find a new approach. Sarah spread her legs and arms around the edges of the lintel and held on for her life. The voices beyond the door whispered warnings, whispered to her of the endless immolation of her mortal self. _Shut up_ , she commanded them.

**_They'll turn me in your arms, lady,_ **   
**_A lion, spare and stern;_ **   
**_But hold me fast, don't let me go,_ **   
**_The father of your bairn._ **

"This is incredibly selfish of you," Jareth said. "Self-indulgent and childish." He circled her in the other direction, and Sarah gasped with pain as the flames licked at her heels. "How dare you throw your life away when the Labyrinth needs you to be Queen? Shall I remind you how vulnerable this world is? What it cost to make? The enemies it has? How easily it could be destroyed? Step away or bring utter ruin and death to the dwarf, to Sir Didymus, to the rock-singer, and all the other helpless creatures who need you to protect them. You must think of your obligations. You must count the cost."

"The cost is worth it," Sarah said. "For you, I'll risk everything, and so will they. All for Love."

**_They'll turn me in your arms, lady,_ **   
**_A red hot rod of iron;_ **   
**_Then hold me fast, don't be afraid,_ **   
**_I'll do to you no harm._ **

"Are you really so foolish? Love," he said with disgust. "You speak to me of _love_. Have I spoken one word to you that was spoken with love? Do you think I have ever done anything with you that wasn't calculated to defeat you, bring you here to this moment, this decision? Kissing you? Fucking you? None of it mattered at all, to me. It was rather disgusting, actually, but I needed to bend you to my will. Everything I have wanted, you have done." He held her still in his gaze, freezing her, burning her with his cruelty. "Find some pride now, and _get rid of me_. Don't you have any self-respect? Are you really so pathetic?"

"Your Majesty," Sarah said, clinging to the doorway. "Do you remember the promise you made? Never to hurt me and leave? You go now, and I'll never speak to you again, in this life or any other. But you won't do that, will you? You won't let it end here." She defied him, brazenly, openly. "When you talk about not loving me, you're a _liar_ , Jareth."

"Sarah," he held out his hands to her. "You're breaking my heart."

"So you've got a heart to break." Her knees felt weak and her feet slipped.

"Sarah, wait. Don't be so stupid!" She felt the evil breath of what waited on the other side moving over her skin. Prickling, pulling, calling, _burning_. His death was hungry, and craved the feast.

" _You're_ stupid! How will you feel when you watch me die?"

"Terrible!" he shouted. "You aggravating girl! I'll feel terrible!"

"Yes, you will," she said. "But it won't hurt for very long. You'll put a stop to that, won't you? You'll end, and the pain you feel now won't matter afterward." She arched in agony as she felt the fire lick her flesh. "That was always your plan. See how it hurts me?" She smelled smoke, and knew her hair was going up, twirling, shriveling. She cried out in pain, but she kept her eyes fixed on his.

"Come away!" he shouted.

"Say your right words," Sarah rasped through cracked and bleeding lips. She was being torn apart, and Jareth was unravelling before her eyes.

"You can't die!" he shrieked. "You're not allowed to die!"

"Tell me why," she commanded. _Cruel, oh so cruel, to force his hand this way_. A curl of fire lit in her lungs and burned her breath away.

"Because I love you! I love you!"

"Prove it," Sarah whispered. "Make a promise and keep it."

"I promise to stay!" he said. "I won't go through that door. Not that one. Not ever." He caught a deep breath and howled, raking his hands over his chest, as if the vow were a sword through his heart. And he came to her, weak and broken, and pried her scorched fingers away from the lintel. He moved her away, and stared at the fiery holocaust that was his death.

"I promise," he said. "You mustn't leave me. I love you, Sarah. I love you." He closed his eyes and slammed the door closed, and pulled his amulet away in the closing. The fire died, and the day went black as the wound in the sky bloomed in thunderheads of black and purple.

Sarah took her key in brittle fingers and locked the door. Jareth stood behind her, kneeling in the sand, staring up at the sky with a blank and hopeless face.

"No home," he moaned. "No return. Forever, forever." The tears fell from his eyes like diamonds, like pearls.

Sarah went to him, tottering. The skin over her back and skull felt tight, and it throbbed with the pain of a mild burn. She went to him, and he clung to her legs like a beggar. She went to him, and stroked his hair and helped him breathe.

"I'm sorry," she croaked. "I am so, so sorry." She wept with him. _Oh, I've done a terrible, terrible thing. Oh, how it hurts._ "Jareth, forgive me. I love you, too much. I love you so much." Her tears fell on his head.

"God help me," he wailed, "I can never go back now. I am completely undone!" He banged his head against her thighs. The wind, sharp and cutting, had begun to roil and scream above their heads. An earthquake shook the land, bringing Sarah down to her knees next to him.

**_They'll turn me in your arms, lady,_ **   
**_A mother-naked man;_ **   
**_Cast your green kirtle over me,_ **   
**_To keep me from the rain._ **

Above them, suddenly, thunder cracked, and the skies opened, pouring out rain in hammering cascades. It moistened the earth of the Underground like tears. Like tears, it washed everything away. The bricks and the wall they'd labored together, the heat-baked bricks of the wall, melted slowly under the storm's assault. Jareth fell onto his back, eyes wide, not breathing, as shaken as his Kingdom under the assault of air and water. It soothed much of Sarah's hurt, but seemed to bring Jareth some bitter pain. His skin was as pale as marble, his hair as insubstantial as spiderwebs. Lightning tore the sky, burst the arch of his death to stone and splinters. Sarah arched over his curled body, shielding him as best she could from the torrential downpour and the wreck of his wall.

_God help us both_ , Sarah thought. _I don't know what to do for him now!_ She pried his amulet out of his hand and hung it around his neck. It was black as a charred corpse, and she felt no magic left in it.

She worked the garnet ring off her finger and put it on his, but it would only fit as far as his first knuckle. "I can't give you your death," she said. "But I can give you my life." The mud poured down over the two of them, threatening to drown them both. She lifted his head out of the soup, and had a frightening moment as she felt like he was dissolving into the mud, becoming flexible and borderless. "Please…let me give you my life. My heart, my love."

She stared down at his face. His eyes were clear as pools, one under the sun, the other under a moonless night. Still the rain came, and she lifted the scorched hem of her jacket to cover him, if only a little. She looked inside him, and saw all he was. Every mote, every cell of his body was marked with a thirteen-houred clock, all stopped at the penultimate hour. This was his life. This was immortality. She tried to move the hands, tried to start those clocks, but they were frozen cold.

_This is the puzzle_ , Sarah thought. _The last puzzle. This is what I came to do. But I need to see!_

_How to see. What to see_. She saw inside Jareth, and there was nothing more there to learn. He was fixed. He was trapped.

So Sarah looked inside herself. There, all was motion and movement, the movement of the stars, the pulse of blood, the sweep of the rhythm of her heart. And there, no smaller than the prick of a pin, was the glorious constellation of her secret working, the new life she'd begun inside her. She looked. She saw how the cluster of cells was busy, making, dividing, forming. It was of her. It was of him. It was new, just beginning, but Sarah could feel herself in this child-to-be, feel her own mortality, her own limited and human lifetime. And mingled in that life, the catalyst of that life… Jareth was there, too.

_Show me_ , she begged her unborn child. _Give me the secret to your mortality, so I can share it with your father. Oh, you'll love your father. Come. Show me the way._

Sarah looked, and saw, and knew. She pressed the final piece of the puzzle into place.

She raised her fingertips, and summoned forth the means to unlock Jareth's immortal prison, break his curse, and set him free. It would hurt him. It would change him. It would make him much more like a human being than a fae. It was the grasp of Love which would yank him out of the immortal fairy ring and into the sway of life and humanity. The cluster of cells that would be their baby had shown her what it needed to be, had given her a pattern to follow.

It looked like a peach. It looked like the peach he had given her, a bite and a taste of his immortal essence, his mortal essence. She conjured it with a single pass of her shaking hand. He had given it to her, and now she gave it back to him. Still the rain came, pouring the wrecked tatters of her hair over his face like dark curtains.

"Eat," she pleaded, pressing the peach to Jareth's mouth. "Oh, beloved, please eat." She lifted him out further from the mud. His weight was light and the way was easy. "Jareth, eat."

"You and the Labyrinth are one," Sarah murmured, stroking the rain and mud out of his face with the sleeves of her jacket, as he ate, and ate hungrily, down to the very stone. "Your Kingdom will come back to you. You can be an owl when you want to be and fly anywhere you want, in this world and any world. And you'll be no-one but yourself, never bound to anything you despise, bound only to what you choose. You can live a mortal lifetime, and die a human death."

Jareth shuddered in a seizure as the magic of the fruit took hold of him. Sarah bore him up, but he was so heavy now.

She whispered in his ear as his body shook with terrible spasms, holding him with her voice. "I claim you for my own. I claim you for humanity. I bind you to mortality by your name, which is Jareth. I free you from your curse, which is immortality. And I love you, which will have to fill in for anything else I've forgotten." She looked up at the sky as the storm raged over the Labyrinth. "God, tell me it's enough!"

As abruptly as it began, the rain stopped.

She pressed her ear against his chest, and heard the silence there resolve into the sound of a thousand thousand secret ticking clocks begin to beat with the rhythm of his heart.

* * *

Jareth sat up slowly in the cradle of her arms, and then stood, covered in dark mud, and stared at his hands. They were human hands. He lifted up one foot and then another. They were human feet. He rubbed his ears. They still had their pointed tips.

"What have you done to me?" he said through pale thin lips, staring at his hands. He clutched his amulet, and then let it go as if it was no longer something he recognized. He ran his hands over his own face and stared at them again. He gave her a passionate, uncertain look with his strange, strange eyes.

"I've set you free," Sarah said. She wrapped her filthy arms around her filthy clothes. "I gave you back to yourself. It wasn't just a peach. It was part of me, and part of you, and part of us together."

Jareth stretched and worked his body, and put a hand to his chest, feeling his own heartbeat. He looked up. The clouds had broken, and a golden sun hung over the Labyrinth where the wound had been, bringing light and life and a rainbow pulsing on the distant horizon of the blooming desert.

"Free?" he said, in a tone of voice she'd never heard from him before. He sounded hopeful. "Free," he said, and sounded certain. He turned away from her and his whole being shifted. In a swirl of bedraggled feathers and fabric, he became an owl.

Sarah rejoiced for him, happy that whatever else she had done, she hadn't cut him off from his legacy of magic. There was still enough fae in him to let him have his magic. But she was also sad. He would leave her now, it was certain.

It was a new day in the Labyrinth, and the owl winged up to meet the sun.

_Free_ , she thought, and wondered if she would ever see him again. "I'll miss you," Sarah said, voice breaking. She closed her eyes. She didn't deserve to keep him, not after what she'd done to him. But she could love him. She would always love him. She didn't want to watch him leave.

But the owl returned. It flew to her and landed on the low remains of the passage wall and stared at her with liquid-tar eyes. "How can you miss me when I'm not going anywhere?" Jareth said, sitting on the low wall where the owl had been. He came and held her in his warm embrace "I'm not leaving you, Sarah. Or did you mean that you intended to leave me?" He pressed the water out of her hair. There seemed to be less of it now.

"You came back," Sarah said. She held on to him gratefully, gratefully, listened to the beat of his heart.

"Of course I came back. I had to give you my answer. It's yes, by the way."

"Yes what?"

"What-what-what," he chided her gently, and took her face between his two hands. "Yes, I will marry you." He kissed her mouth tenderly. She felt the burns fade away, felt the pain fade, too. He looked down at the garnet ring on his finger, and transferred it to his pinky, which fit. "Or are you about to say that what you've done and said here isn't a proposal? A rather dramatic proposal," he said, twisting the ring around his finger. "After all that fuss, you could have given me a bigger ring." His words were teasing, but she heard other tones of his voice. His fragility, his fear, his love, and his trust. He caressed her shoulders, touched every part of her body his hands could reach.

"I'll give you a dozen rings," Sarah said. "A baker's dozen. I'll marry you."

He wrapped his fresh cloak of feathers around them both.

"I'm dirty," Sarah protested.

"Not that dirty," he scoffed. He rubbed some of the mud out of her hair. "Well, maybe dirty. You've ruined that jacket. Though I suppose I could clean and mend it for you. Don't," he said, as she moved away from him. "I want you always with me. Are you ready to go?"

"Where?" she asked.

He pointed to the south, where the high walls of the Labyrinth waited in the distance, waited beyond his ruined work. "To the Kingdom, Sarah. Home."

"I have a home, too," Sarah said. She leaned against his chest and felt his heartbeat. Dark flakes fell from his amulet. "Your home is my home, and mine is yours. We won't be able to hide from each other, ever again. Your world, and mine. Both."

"I thought it would be different," he said, smoothing his hands over her filthy skin. "I thought… perhaps I would feel different. But I only feel like myself. Is this what love does?"

Sarah brushed his hair back from his face. "I don't know much about love," but Jareth snorted, interrupting her. "Of the two of us, you're the expert. Instruct me, Sarah."

"Okay. Well." She leaned against him and tucked her head under his chin, felt the beating of his heart. "Everything I've learned about love I learned here. I don't think it fixes anything. It just makes the broken bits less terrible. It's not ownership, Jareth. Can you cope with that?"

"Not enough rules, not enough struture," he said, running his hands over her head and down her body. "Sounds like a terrible risk. But … I'll try?" He kissed her again. "I think…" he hummed a few notes and began to sing, and the music in the day gathered to him and made a chorus of voices and sound.

_My death waits like an old roué, so confident I'll go his way._  
Whistle to him and the passing time.  
My death waits like a Bible truth at the funeral of my youth  
weep loud for that and the passing time.  
My death waits like a witch at night, as surely as our love is bright  
let's not think about the passing time.

_But whatever lies behind the door_   
_there is nothing much to do._   
_Angel or Devil, I don't care,_   
_For in front of that door…_   
_there is you._

"Now I'll teach you to fly," he said gleefully. "There will be a tomorrow, and a day after that, and a Labyrinth and an Earth and Heaven too… but this hour… this is ours."

"I'm not afraid," Sarah murmured. She thought about the new life inside her, thought about telling him, telling him her secret. But that would be for later. She would savor that secret, and give it to him as a gift when the time was ripe.

He made himself an owl, and she became a silver feather on his breast. It seemed so easy, now that she could see. He told her without words how the trick was done, and she understood. He told her how he loved her, how he needed her, how he wanted her, how he wanted to help her and teach her, lead her and follow her, learn from her and live with her.

The walls of the Labyrinth soon spread out far beneath them. Everyone was there. The walls bloomed with the sparkle of water, not dust. The colors were washed clean and pure. All hurts were balmed by the heavenly mercy Sarah had brought with her. The little world rejoiced as the King came back to his Kingdom, with his Queen like a seal on his arm, a talisman of Love over his heart.

Flying. Flying was as easy as falling. And she had to laugh, because it was so easy, to fly with him, to fall in love. It was so easy. _It was a piece of cake_.

* * *

**_Next… Chapter 25: "A Piece of (Wedding) Cake"_  
**

* * *

_Dear Reader, you are cordially invited to the wedding of Jareth, Goblin King, and Sarah Sophia Williams, rightful Queen of the Labyrinth. Consider this your engraved invitation, and please do not forget to RSVP in the form a review before clicking "Next." (It is never too late to let me know if you've enjoyed this story.)_

_We've had quite an adventure, but now it's time to celebrate, with some wedding ceremonies and some partying, some ominous foreshadowing, and some unexpected guests. There will be cake enough for everyone, and the champagne will flow in fountains. Gifts will be given and gifts received_.

_**All is well, watch the world go by. All is well, as the twenty-first century flies.  
** _

* * *

_Italicized verses at the final door are modified versions of Child Ballad 39B: "Tam Lin."  
Jareth's final song is Ziggy Stardust's lament, "My Death."_


	25. A Piece of Cake

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Soundtrack for Chapter 25:
> 
> "Thursday's Child" –David Bowie  
> "Home"—Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes  
> "That's All I've Got to Say"—Art Garfunkel

**A Piece of (Wedding) Cake**

* * *

 

It's almost a month to the day since Sarah captured me.

It is a strange thing, to praise one's captor. And my Sarah has imprisoned me in a thousand secret ways. I find I don't mind. I find, after everything that's happened, that it is very easy to praise her, and easier to love her. Not that I'm particularly easy to love, myself. She has this irritating habit of finding me out when I brood, but at least she gives me privacy when I ask for it. The old ball and chain, the wife. But not a jailor, or a judge. She's a friend, and a teacher. I've never had anyone like her.

Sarah teaches me all sorts of things (and amuses herself when I don't perform these things correctly. My initial education did not prepare me for the laughter of others at my expense). For instance, how to shave. There tends to be hair that wants to grow on my face now, and she taught me how to use the steel razor if I want it gone. When I dubiously suggest that a beard might be fun, she absolutely forbids it. Stubborn woman. When I pointed out that she grows hair on her face as well, particularly between her eyebrows and over her upper lip, I thought she might murder me. It's true, but apparently women's hair is controversial when it's on the upper lip or between the eyebrows. It's supposed to be invisible. (Sarah's education did not prepare her for jokes made at her expense. So you see, I teach her, too.)

Learning to drive a car was easier, and with less immediately fatal possibilities than commentary upon facial hair. I like to drive. I'm good at it. It's almost like flying. She also teaches me the use of money. I have some small acquaintance with money, but Sarah informs me she is filthy rich, an heiress. Both Linda and Jeremy left her the considerable bulk of their combined fortunes. Blood money, she calls it, but I hug and I hold her. The blood may be on her hands, but she is a priestess, not an executioner. Besides, spending money is fun, especially on silly and useless items. I am collecting guitars, electronic ones that Sarah won't let me plug in to their very proper amplifiers. I warn her that once we're married, she will have to put up with much more noise and music than she wants. She suggests a quiet and unassuming instrument, like the oboe. I pluck and pick at the shiny Gibson in my hands, red as a ripe cherry, and tell her that either I will have this electric harp or I will have a ten-piece drum kit, and I will have it shipped to our hotel, and I will play it at four in the morning. She relents. The money pours through our hands like water, held in magnetic strips of plastic cards. I had never given money much thought before, or when I did, I considered it one of the snares of Winter, but now I see its magical properties, how beautiful it is to spend, especially when the spending brings me this much happiness. The red guitar is mine, and I wear it back to our temporary lodgings like a shield across my back. It elicits no comment.

We're here in New York, the state and not the city, which Sarah informs me are two distinct entities, and to which I reply I know, I know. Honestly, I am not an absolute naïf in the ways of the world and in the cultures of humanity. Being here brings back memories, and few of them are pleasant. I have nightmares, still. But she strokes me and holds me and makes love to me in the safe nest of our hotel room. On balance, she gives me more than was ever taken from me. I'm tempted to suffer more just so she will make it up to me all the harder.

We're here to see her father. I'm not sure who is more nervous about this reunion, Sarah or myself. I dislike the clean marbled architecture of the courthouse, and my fingers are less nimble than they used to be, less dangerous. I feel like I would like to be well-armed for these places, the habitations of Winter and John Company in particular. He's still unbound in the world, after all. He is still King Over the World, until Spring arrives. I see a few other couples who are here for the same purposes as us. Some of the women wear or carry flowers. I haven't anticipated that Sarah might need flowers. I will get her flowers, but not now. After. After.

I affix my name to the piece of paper Sarah gives me. She has told me I can use any name I want, so I use hers. _Jareth Williams_ , I sign in loopy flourishes that defy the perimeter of the box. This will be our marriage license. One needs a license to drive and a license to marry in this country. These rules are hilarious and arbitrary, but I understand that they are of great import. All of the most important things in the world are silly and strange, particularly as regards human beings.

I'm distracting myself now.

Her father is a very important man, she tells me. He is a judge, for the State Supreme Court. I scoff and indicate that I, too, am a Judge, and my court is greater. She lets this pass. She knows how intimidated I am for this meeting. She is nervous as well. She has dressed with great care, in a sleeveless summer dress all in pale green, which brings out the golden motes in her irids. And I am in the clothing she's demanded of me, a summerweight hand-tailored suit of charcoal grey. I utterly refuse to wear the tie. It is stuffed in my pocket. Instead, I'm wearing a heavy gold watch on my arm, one of the gifts Sarah has presented to me. It feels heavy. It keeps the right time. And I'm wearing my amulet under my (expensive, cotton) shirt, with its buttons. The amulet is the amulet, though it is less now than it once was, because I am more now than I was before. Now it is a symbol that I have freedom, freedom to wear it and act in my royal capacity, or remove it to be a private individual. I am not a King here, but I wear it because the amulet is also like armor. It reminds me of who I am. I find I need all the symbolic strength I can muster for this encounter. Sarah tugs my arm impatiently.

"So." Her father, Robert, has come from behind his desk. His regalia is on a hanger. Sarah has explained that he is not allowed to hug or kiss even his own daughter when in his regalia. It looks only like a black robe to me, but I understand the rules for these sorts of encounters, with people of significant power. They hug and kiss, and then Sarah introduces me.

"Dad, this is Jareth."

Robert is old now. He was so young when I saw him last, but even then he had the air of gravitas. He looks me up and down. I feel myself judged. But then, that is what he does for a living. This is what I used to do, for a distraction on a boring endless day. I will learn from Robert, if he lets me. I will learn to be better than I am at being a mortal man.

"We know each other, don't we," Robert says, and does not make it quite a question.

"We have had dealings, yes. I'm flattered that you remember."

"How could I forget you? Tyto Albans, the escaped madman," Robert muses. "Dangerous and sly. Maker of bargains, and giver of gifts."

"I prefer to be called Jareth," I reply, a bit dryly.

"You haven't changed," he says with wonder, looking at my face. "Almost forty years later, and you haven't aged a day."

"I've aged," I say. "I've changed, just as you have." I pause, and then add, "Though maybe in less obvious ways."

"Do you know what happened to Robin Zakar?"

I dislike this question. It hurts. I wish he hadn't asked, but he has the right to remind me. I wish Sarah hadn't insisted I tie my hair back. I would like to hide in it. So I stare Robert in the face the way I would an adversary. "I know," I say. "It's very difficult when someone you love dies. Worse when you've wronged them. You have my sympathies as well. For Linda. And for Jeremy."

He has the manners to be ashamed for trying to shame me. Our eyes meet, and we understand one another. He understands me, at least. I might know this man for a hundred years and not know him. Robert Williams is a deep one. And he is good. Will he find me unworthy of his daughter? (I'll never be worthy, but I'll attempt to be _not_ unworthy of her.)

"You had me steal her away," Robert said. "And now you're stealing my firstborn daughter."

"Dad," Sarah pleads. She clutches my arm close and leans her head against my shoulder.

"Yes," I admit. "Your only daughter. But you didn't steal Robin. You set her free." I look at Sarah, run a hand over her hair. I'm half in love with her hair. Perhaps I'll marry it instead, and take it on a wild romp. Hell toupee. I am scattering. I must remember what it was I was about to say. I look at Sarah again. "Sarah set me free," I say. "She stole my heart away and gave it back to me."

"I know you're not human," Robert says bleakly. "I've always known that. But is there enough of a human being to you to love my Sarah? Are you capable of giving her a happy life?"

"I'll give her anything she wants," I say. "How could I not? She is my soul."

I can see that this, although it is absolute truth, does not satisfy Robert. He's never been very poetic. He prefers the truth to be told straight, not slant. But then, he's a judge.

"When I first met your daughter, she beat me at a game," I said. "It could be argued that I let her win, but I wasn't a particularly good loser. But I wanted to lose. I wanted to diminish, to be less, to be forgotten." Sarah's hand in mine is warm. She lends me courage to finish. "I don't know how, but she played the game again. It could be argued that this time, she let _me_ win. She's made me more than I was before. So I love her. And I want to be with her. For everything that comes next."

Robert watches my face, and I let him see what I feel. His eyes give an almost imperceptible tilt, indicating assent.

"And as for you, Sarah." Robert gives his daughter a daunting look. "You were always so steady after the storm of your teenage years. But marriage isn't just an adventure. It's a commitment. You have to choose very, very carefully. He loves you, Sarah, and I think you love him back. I loved your mother, and she loved me, but we didn't belong together. She belonged with Jeremy. Do you belong together? Will you take him for life?"

"Dad," Sarah says, choking a little on her words. She is upset, near tears, but I think they are happy ones. "I already have. I just want your blessing for us."

"Well then," he says stiffly, and he is concealing some strong feeling, but not very well. I think it might be… happiness. Happiness for us, although guarded. "That's all I need to know," he says. He walks back to his desk and buzzes the intercom and asks his secretary and one of his paralegals to come in and serve as witnesses. And he dons his regalia. He blesses us, and opens his book, and he marries us, according to the traditions of Sarah's people.

I don't feel any different when it is over. The gold ring on my left hand matches my gold watch, and the tiny garnet in gold on my pinky. My head feels heavy, that's what's different. Robert breaks protocol and embraces and kisses us both, wearing his black judge's robe. His kiss on my forehead startles me, but it doesn't hurt. "You're my son now," he says. "Jareth Williams. Please make me proud to say so."

His son. I have never been anyone's son before. Now I have a wife (I've had her from the moment she claimed me) and a father, and perhaps…. Perhaps also something else. But that will be Sarah's decision.

Sarah hands her father one of several few and preciously guarded invitations. I have lettered each one on expensive, gilded paper. They are magic. They say when, and where, the party will occur. They say when, and who, the special guests are to be. They will bring the ones whose names are on them. Naturally Robert and his wife receive one. Toby's invitation is in the mail. But I am sure he will come. The party wouldn't be complete without him. I see him, in my mind's eye, a very small child in a red-and-white-striped jumper. He was a very nice baby, but he's not a baby any more. I'm curious to see what time and the world have made out of him. And of course, Sarah loves him best of everyone in the world. Everyone except perhaps me. We leave the courthouse together, holding hands. So much noise in the city, so much heat. We stop at a florist's stall on our walk and I buy her bunches of bright calla lilies and orchids until her arms are full of them. Their curved fleshiness reminds me of her body, which is so different from mine, and so lovely.

* * *

Sarah and I make midday love in the white expanse of hotel linens. I tell you now I adore everything about this woman. Everything about her is precious to me, a price above rubies, or the jade slats of her eyes. I don't need to place the stars within her eyes or the moon within her heart. Instead I place a certain important and enjoyable piece of myself inside her, and bring her pleasure upon pleasure until her eyes cross and she begs me to stop.

"No," I tease, torturing her. Truly, her sweetness is above all sweetnesses, especially when she is close to that brink. I can fly as an owl and I can fly in a car but the best of all is this flight we make together. She has taught me how to fly this way. She falls over the edge of that precipice so easily, in my arms, and when she falls I catch her up again and again and again, until I, too, am spent. She glows with heat and life. We don't often find our way into each others' dreams any more—she has her self, and I have mine—but in these moments, we are of one flesh and of one mind, and the secrets we keep from each other are kept out of courtesy. And so I can't help but know that Sarah has a secret she's not ready to tell me. It glows in her. She glows with it. She is all stars and green. Oh, I love her. She is my life. It's her gift to give or withhold, and I won't reproach her if she won't or can't give it to me. Anyway, it's discourteous to take things without being asked to. I've always understood that. So I must wait until she says the right words, or rest content in her arms, as I am doing now, pretending never to know.

* * *

We have done things all out of the proper order, Sarah informs me, on the day of the party, a month after our civil marriage. (Our sacred marriage was simultaneously also a proposal which was followed by a secular ceremony and a then a honeymoon and today is a reception which will be, in some strange way, also a ceremony that signifies our union. Time may be linear, but meaningfulness is not.) I am wearing a coat of licorice green so dark it looks black in anything but direct sunlight. In the light of the Labyrinth's sun, it sparkles with the winking light of ten million sequins and drops of diamante, all in green and peach. I find it heavy and rather too hot for the weather, but Sarah insisted on this coat, although I decided on green and not the mordant midnight blue she suggested. I also insisted on an open shirt, not one that chokes me at the throat. She is wearing a dress of pistachio froth that looks good enough to eat. There are ribbons and flowers in her hair, and a tiny veil pinned up over the nape of her neck. I insisted on the dress, although she objected, calling it "froofy" and "ridiculous."

"You _like_ froofy and ridiculous," I told her, buttoning the last of thirty-three buttons that close it over her back. "Give yourself permission to enjoy it." Like my coat, her dress is just a bit too warm for the heat, but darkness and night will come eventually. We're both very pleased by our fancy clothes, even if they cause us some discomfort. Our fancy clothes are probably a metaphor, but whether for a mortal life or an immortal one or even just for our duties at this party, who can say?

Everyone comes. And everyone meets us at the border to this vast party, to see us and touch us and bring us gifts. I'd had an argument with Sarah about the setting. I'd wanted this party to take place on the very edge of our Labyrinth, at the terminus of my ruined wall, the place where we had truly first been wed. I relented when Sarah pointed out the logistics in getting such a large group of people—and she intended that everyone who wanted to come should be able to come—to the perimeter of the Kingdom. Also, as she wisely pointed out, the goblins wouldn't be able to attend, and how could she marry the Goblin King unless he had his full entourage? (I had hoped she'd overlook that detail.) So I acceded to her wisdom and apologized for my short-sightedness with such thoroughness that she held no grudge. See what a good loser I can be?

Instead, the party is held on a broad green plain near the forested park. There are wooden arches and pergolas that bear up carpets and garlands of flowers and shade the company from the sun in a huge perimeter around the dance floor; guests must meander carefully between the tables to find where they're going. It is a tiny labyrinth-within-the-Labyrinth. It's very pretty and very pleasing. But instead of at the center, our table waits under a red canopy to the very north of all this nonsense. The apex, and not the center. Before we can sit down to the dyspeptic dinner that's been prepared for the crowd, or dip our common goblet into one of the thirteen golden fountains of gold or pink champagne, we must wait and greet every guest, and greet them by name.

The pile of gifts begins to reach gargantuan proportions before the young sun is halfway up the sky, as does my fatigue. This is an endurance contest, as I had suspected when Sarah explained the traditions of the wedding reception.

"We'll have to find a pit in the junk-yard for all this stuff," I say to her ominously, eyeing the mountain of presents.

"Hush," says Sarah, although she's as daunted as I am by the weight of these new material possessions. "The gifts aren't the half of it. We're going to have to send out a thank-you note for every single one, whether we use them or not."

"That brownie just delivered a box of dung-beetles. _You_ can write the thank-you note for that one."

"Every single one," Sarah says, gritting her teeth. "Jareth," she says very, very quietly, "Why did we invite all these people?" She turns her smile on and charmingly welcomes a representative cavalcade of memes and the Grand High Nelwyn.

"You insisted," I reply, low in her ear. "You said this was the way it's done." Then I, too, wear a cheerful smile, managing even to thank the Order of the Gash for their attendance and their present of … the box is bleeding. I hold it to my ear. Perhaps also screaming. I put it on the edge of the pile, where it won't leak onto anything more delicate, and remind myself to take care of that particular thank-you note myself.

The little wood-children, Entings, Sarah calls them, come bringing bouquets of foxglove and chaplets of leaves. Sarah is deeply touched by these gifts, and the smile she gives me when I suggest wearing them lifts my spirits considerably. I'm fond enough of the Entings, but it was the greenness and fragility of their oak-leaf circlets that made me want to wear them. Hats are dreadfully unfashionable, as are crowns, and the woven twigs are likely still buggy or full of some sort of sap that will no doubt give one of us an allergic reaction. Still, there is Sarah. She looks so fetching with the fresh oak leaves pressed against her white skin, her dark hair. She looks lovely in her crown. I'm sure I only look silly.

The Order of the Gash and Underbed Terrors and Herne's cohort of wild riders notwithstanding, I know who the most dangerous guests are when they arrive, clattering and cackling and clamouring like the jackdaws they are. Not the goblins, for the goblins are here already, acting as if it's their party and not mine. No, it's the storytellers, the Dubious Ladies and Gentlemen. They greet Sarah and I with that curious mixture of insolence and awe that all storytellers use to address their subjects. They watch everything. They see everything. And they make every story possible. I feel myself weighed and measured and evaluated, like an animal at auction. How forthrightly and boldly they stare! They bring gifts that are books. Big books and little books and some just scraps of paper. Prophecies and possibilities. These things all ought to be burned, but that would be as dangerous as reading them. They look at Sarah, too, or at least some of them do. Some of them acknowledge us, and some dismiss us. Ah well. The apathy of authors is safer than their adoration. "You're getting alliterative," Sarah murmurs to me. I didn't realize I'd been speaking out loud. "Don't worry. We're almost at the end now." She is speaking of the line of guests, which does indeed appear to be thinning, but I think it might also be this story for us, if this is a story being told.

One of the more thoughtful of the writers presses a note into my hand. It is her gift, and she won't move unless I read it now.

**"May your love be not merely a bond or vow,**  
 **But a moving sea between the shores of your souls.**  
 **May you be as the great pillars of the temple,**  
 **Independent in strength, but united in purpose.**  
 **May you sing and dance together, but in singular notes**  
 **Even as the strings of the lute are individual,**  
 **Yet quiver with the same music."**  
 **Adapted from:**  
 **― Kahlil Gibran, Xian zhi**

I give her a curt nod and a piercing look. The words of Kahlil Gibran have long been precious to me. How did she know? I would ask, but it's never wise to question an oracle.

The last one, the most dangerous one of all, brings nothing. Her hands are empty. Nor does she attempt to touch us. "Enjoy this," she says. Her face is inscrutable, but I think she wishes us well. "This closing chapter ends happily, but there's always more to say. And I think where you two are concerned, there's much, much more to say. Not all of it happy. But as we love you, we hope you enjoy today. While it lasts." She gives us both a curtsey, which I am extremely careful to return with a reverent bow.

"Who the hell was that?" Sarah asks, looking daggers at the back of the latest of storytellers. "I'm not sure I like her."

"Now now," I chide, and we greet the joint Embassy of Fantasia, both live-action and animated, and then the Doctors Parnassus, Caligari, and who? and their respective Cabinets and companions. Really, I'd never had any idea the Labyrinth was so well-known.

"I wasn't expecting so many plus-ones," she says. "Will there be enough food for everyone? Enough seating?"

"Enough," I say. What's the use of commanding magic if you can't anticipate these sorts of issues? I've prepared for all this. Everything will be right. Eventually the reception line slows from a flood to a trickle, and we're free to take our places with the guests and eat our well-earned meal.

Sitting next to her, eating from one plate, drinking from one cup, I murmur in Sarah's ear about the things I intend to do to her once she's out of that dress. Or, considering the dress has been sewn on—the buttons are mostly ornamental—what I will do while she's still in that dress. That dress, I tell her, placing my hand on the silk-covered curve of her knee, is an undeniable provocation. I slide my hand up further, gently cupping the curve of her inner thigh. She reminds me that I'm the one who made the dress, so I'm only provoking myself. But she blushes anyway, high on her cheeks, and she squeezes her legs together around my questing hand. I wonder to myself if there might be a way for us to abscond together. Five minutes might even be enough. But no, we're not going to be allowed five minutes during the party. We're here to be watched, after all; we're here to see and to be seen. The look she gives me will be taken for nothing more than what it is; a woman well-pleased with her husband. Her pleasure half-sates my own appetite. I put my arm around her shoulders and we feed each other dainties. "I'll get even with you for this," she says, but I cram an hors d'oeuvre between her lips and tell her to imagine it's something else entirely. She uses her teeth, giving me a wicked look. Spiteful, sexy Sarah.

When we're more than halfway into our wedding feast, the goblins take the opportunity to put on a pageant for our entertainment. It's the story of Sarah's latest journey through the Labyrinth. I recognize the goblin actor in the lead role of Sarah, the hero. It's that diminutive mop. Yicky. No, Yimmil. We watch together as the goblins act out the story of Sarah's arrival, her avoidance of the throne, the clash with the trolls, her slaying of the worm, the naming of the Entings, her trickery in the Mountain, her battle with the Scorpion… all these things that Sarah has done, from the perspective of one little goblin. I'm in awe of everything she's done, and the goblin with her. The climax of the pageant comes as Yimmil parades around on the back of a white chicken—a black chicken dipped in flour, wearing a heart-shaped mask—which all the goblins point at and name Goblin King.

"I'm slightly insulted by the casting," I observe. "Chickens look nothing like owls."

"Hush," Sarah says. "He's a Prince among chickens. Serves you right."

"And you're being portrayed by a goblin in a wig and a dress," I say. "Serves _you_ right."

"It really does," she says, laughing. The little goblin rides his scolding mount up to the edge of the cake, which is being wheeled out now, on cue. The cake is the size of an elephant, and shaped like an approximation of my Labyrinth—rather lopsided and suggestive than true to perspective, and the little Sarah and the little Jareth climb the spiral path of the cake to the very top, where there is a gilded tiny castle. The chicken ruffles his feathers with a puff of flour and begins to preen.

Sarah stands and throws one of the roses from her hair to the tiniest goblin, who catches it. The guests break into rather uncertain applause until I stand and try to say something. All I can do is observe that little goblin wearing a miniature copy of Sarah's dress—even the same fabric, as I had enough remnants left over to fulfill the little goblin's very humble request—and the little brown wig, and his fur stuck over in the back with primroses and hedge-roses so he looks like a bouquet. He looks at me, for my approval. I hear laughter. I am the one laughing and clapping my hands. The goblins riot with joy, as they're prone to do, and Yimmil jumps down into their waiting hands with the protesting chicken in tow, and is carried away in triumph under a thunderstorm of petals and confetti.

Good gracious God, that cake. It's a monstrosity. I have doubts about its edibility, as it has been baked by an army of goblins and probably frosted with their feet. It's their wedding-gift to us, though, and I'd no more turn up my nose at it than I would offer insult to the greater Powers of Heaven and Hell. This is a labor of love although as Sarah and I cut out (gouge out) the first piece to break and share together, I can see they've baked the dough through with baubles and trinkets and favors and mottos and four-and-twenty live blackbirds which break shrieking out of the pastry and at least one pair of socks. Yet for all that, the cake is sweet and fluffy and toothsome, and everyone who wants a piece of our wedding cake (and everyone who doesn't) has one. The sun sets, the moon rises, and the dancing begins.

The first dance is for the bride and her father. I'd thought I might be jealous to see Sarah dance with anybody else, but I am not. I enjoy watching her. Karen, beside me, also looks slightly mournful. She does love her stepdaughter. Anyone who says differently is misinformed. Halfway through the dance, I offer Karen my hand and we, too, dance together. At the end of the song, this charming quartet switches partners and Sarah and I, with Robert and Karen, keep the floor for a moment until others feel called upon to join us. Sarah and I are cut apart many, many times; everyone wants a chance to dance with the bride and the groom. Little Sir Didymus has his turn with Sarah, as does the rather stupid rock-singer. Even the goblins have their chance. Sarah lifts her skirts and jigs with them, showing her pretty white calves in their silver-star-spangled stockings and the green ribbons on her green shoes.

Hoggle is not here. He's not to be found. I'll worry about this later. Sarah has noticed and is hurt by his absence, it's certain, and it angers me that the dwarf has given her any cause for grief on her happy day.

The music comes from a thousand (to be precise, one thousand three hundred) floating crystal baubles that glow with tiny flickering lights and churn out subtle scents. Jasmine, roses, amber, mist, Bog, and more. This cacophony of sound and smell should be discordant, but it isn't. Or at least, nobody complains. The night is also lit by the flare of magnesium flashes from the Polaroid cameras at the tables. We have no formal photographers, only informal ones. I want these moments recorded by the people enjoying them. Some will be kept, and some left behind for us to enjoy.

I find young Finnvarrah at my side, and give him a dance without his even needing to ask. If I owe Sarah my life, I owe young Finnvarrah something more. I don't know what that will be or how to give it to him. "I've done badly by you," I say, resting one of my hands on the top of his head. He clutches my waist tighter. He's very quiet as we waltz, and he leans his head on my shoulder as if he's exhausted. I remember him as a very tiny child, and as a frightened youth. I love Sarah, but there's room enough in me to love Finnvah as well. I wonder if he can forgive me. Before I can figure out a way to ask, our dance ends. And he smiles at me. Sarah has been dancing with Toby—tall boy!—and has brought him close to us. The four of us pause.

"Young Toby," I say, smiling at him. "Allow me to introduce Finnvarrah-Vercingetorix, brother of the Red Branch and Prince of the Labyrinth."

"I never agreed to that," Finnvah corrects me, and then turns that beautiful smile on Toby. The boy blushes. He blushes! I want to laugh, but that would be cruel. "Toby," Finnvah says, bowing with one hand over his chest. "I know your sister. But I've been curious about you." Finnvah's smile becomes slightly more pointed. He offers the youth his arm. "Satisfy my curiousity?" he asks, and leads Toby away, who follows like someone in a romantic dream, bashful and overwhelmed.

Sarah gives them a brief look of concern as I sweep her up in my arms. We've all been dancing for hours and hours, those of us who want to dance, and yet she and I have had only three dances together. I've counted. "I didn't know," she said, watching Finnvah say something and Toby reply with a giddy and delighted laugh. "Jareth, Toby's only half his age. Finnvah could be his father. It's not… right."

"Don't be so fussy," I say, twirling her round and round until she's dizzy and at my mercy. "How old am I? How old are you? Let them be."

"He might get hurt," Sarah says.

"If he's _very_ lucky," I say, and smile at her. She understands what I mean. People can't be kept in boxes, even luxurious boxes. They have to be free, to fall or smash. Truth hurts. But desire isn't there just to tempt us. Sometimes it's to temper us, make us better than we were before. It's for each of us, to choose.

"Queen Underpants!" Yimmil shouts as a gambol of goblins mob us. Sarah shrieks with embarrassed glee as Yimmil dives under her skirts. She hops and jumps and rustles their length, trying to dislodge the invader. He emerges with not one, but both of her green silk garters.

"That was _supposed_ to be a little less precipitous," I say to him sternly. Sarah puts her hands on her hips and glares at me. I shrug. "Tradition," I diplomatically assert. "Isn't it? The bride's garter?" I act as though butter wouldn't melt in my mouth, I am so sober. The little goblin takes aim and slingshots one of those garters at my head. I'm shocked by this act of _lese-majeste_. I stare him down. Teasing Sarah is one thing, but teasing me?

"Well, laugh," Yimmil says saucily. And then I laugh, because I have to laugh. I rub the spot on my forehead where he's winged me and I laugh. The goblins are funny, after all, even when the joke is on me. Sarah brings Yimmil up in a hug—with perhaps a few stern words about behaving himself—and flings him out into the partying crowd. He shrieks with joy, and I hear a few guests shout with dismay. Ah well, but it's true—this party is for the citizens of the Labyrinth as much as it is for Sarah and I, and goblins must be goblins.

This truly has turned out to be a beautiful party. I'm pleasantly surprised. Near dawn, when many of the guests have gone away home, and some are slumped in quiet corners canoodling or sleeping or drunk, and a lingering few pluck at the very last pleasurable fruits of the festivities, I sit at one of the abandoned tables with Sarah on my knee. Her veil and our chaplets of leaves and our shoes have been discarded. We're weary and footsore and almost completely exhausted. But we won't leave until the utmost end. It's then that Sarah makes her choice.

"Jareth," she says, and she buries her face in my shirt. She's wearing my velvet coat like a cape around her shoulders.

"Sarah," I reply, and stroke her overdressed and tangled hair. I'll comb it out for her before bed. I have energy enough for that.

"I have something to tell you. But I was worried about what it might mean. I wasn't ready to tell you before. I am now."

She takes my hand and draws it down to cup her abdomen. And she waits. She breathes. "It's something very special. It's a wedding gift." She rubs her hand over mine and looks me in the face. Words are unnecessary and yet so very important. I had prepared for this moment, but I feel now that I hadn't prepared at all. I can barely breathe for the weight of some emotion covering me. It's reverence. It's joy.

"How do you feel," she asks hesitantly, "about children?" She strokes the hair back over my ear. "Because in about seven months, I'm going to transform you again. I'm going to give you a new name. I want to make you a father."

I stroke her hand and tilt her chin to look her in the eyes. I kiss her the way I would kiss a goddess. She is a goddess. She is Sarah.

"Do you want it?" she asks quietly.

Oh, Sarah. Oh my. Do I want it? _Give me the child_. She's so heavy in my arms. She has the weight of two, which steadies me like the tail of a kite. I consider telling her this, but decide a reference to her weight might be as imprudent and badly-received as discussions of facial hair. So instead I speak the simple truth.

"I'm fond of children," I reply.

Tomorrow there will be time for worry and care. Tomorrow we'll have to work out how to negotiate our lives and livings, and how to make a place and a life together that satisfies and accommodates us both. Tomorrow will come and a day after that, and trial and struggle and difficulty and friends and enemies and allies. Tomorrow is just about to come. The light of dawn is on the horizon. But tomorrow will be a day with Sarah in it, and myself in it as well. Everything seems possible. I find I'm very much looking forward to what the next day will bring. Life is so interesting.

* * *

_**Throw me tomorrow, now that I've really got a chance.** _  
_**Throw me tomorrow: everything's falling into place.** _  
_**Throw me tomorrow: seeing my past to let it go.** _

_**Only for you I don't regret that I was Thursday's child.** _

**The End  
**

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> Jade Cooper has created a beautiful cover for this work: http://cooperama.deviantart.com/art/Kingdom-Come-Finished-Cover-437388206


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